López-Gatell criticizes testing travelers for Covid: ‘Sick people don’t travel’

By

-

February 3, 2021

Travelers low risk for Covid, says coronavirus point man.

Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell has dismissed the need for Mexico to require people entering the country to present a negative Covid-19 test result, asserting that such a measure would have a minimal impact on the coronavirus situation here and that sick people generally don’t travel.

The coronavirus point man noted that some airports in Mexico are asking people to present a negative test result in light of the decision by the United States, Canada and other countries to require international air travelers to prove they they are not infected with the virus.

López-Gatell said the World Health Organization does not support the pre-travel testing requirement, adding that it is not a particularly effective measure to combat the pandemic.

He said if there is already widespread and active community transmission of the coronavirus in a country, the contribution that international travelers could make to worsening the situation is “frankly small,” even when they come from a nation with high infection levels because “among other things, it’s well documented that travelers are generally people of low risk or low probability of having an active [Covid-19] illness precisely because, in general, people don’t travel while sick.”

“Of course it’s possible that some people who travel are in the incubation period and they could be in a pre-symptomatic period in which they could be transmitters [of the virus],” López-Gatell conceded.

The deputy minister also said that requiring travelers entering Mexico to present a negative Covid-19 test result would have an adverse effect on tourism.

Meanwhile, Canada’s recently-announced hotel quarantine requirement for people entering that country faces opposition from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, a Canadian legal advocacy organization.

It announced that immediate legal action was being prepared against the Trudeau government over the declaration that Canadian residents will be subject to mandatory quarantine, at their own expense, after returning from international travel, regardless of their negative Covid status.

“These measures are a blatant violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, including the right to enter and leave Canada, the right to liberty and security of the person, the right to not be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned, the right to retain legal counsel, and the right not to be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment.”

The Justice Centre said Friday that it had come to its attention that the Canadian government “is already arresting Canadians arriving in the country by air and transporting them to a secret location, even though they possess a negative PCR test.”

The Canadian Snowbird Association also wrote to Alghabra to ask that its members be exempt from mandatory hotel quarantine because they left Canada months before the new rule was announced.

“To force Canadian citizens to pay over [CAD] $2,000 for three nights of accommodation in a government-approved hotel is unreasonable and would be a hardship for many,” the association said.

While the Justice Center claimed that people are being detained upon arrival at Canadian airports, Canada’s mandatory hotel quarantine program has not yet started. However, it could start as soon as Thursday, Alghabra said on Sunday.

The mandatory three-day hotel quarantine requirement for travelers entering Canada, that country’s negative Covid-19 test requirement and especially its three-month suspension of flights to Mexico, are expected to have a significant impact on Mexico’s ailing tourism sector.

Tourism Minister Miguel Torruco said that up to 791,000 fewer tourists will come to Mexico as a result of the suspension and that tourism sector revenue could decrease by US $782 million.

Source: El Economista (sp), Montreal Gazette (en)

Covid vaccination registrations overwhelm site; 3 million seniors to be inoculated in 1 week

By

MND Staff

-

February 3, 2021

0

senior citizens — The vaccination website is for seniors who live in medium-sized and large cities.

The federal government website for the registration of seniors who want to receive a Covid-19 vaccine was overwhelmed by high demand on Tuesday, leaving many people unable to access it.

Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said the site was swamped as soon as it was launched on Tuesday morning.

“That really pleases us, it speaks of the clarity the people of Mexico have about the importance of getting vaccinated against the SARS-CoV-2 virus and protecting oneself and protecting others from Covid-19,” he told reporters at the Health Ministry’s Tuesday night coronavirus press briefing.

López-Gatell said that 65,000 to 70,000 people per second were trying to register their details at one point and the system was saturated as a result.

The coronavirus point man said that work is being carried out to ensure that the website can cope with high volumes of traffic and advised people to be patient and continue trying to register. The site – mivacuna.salud.gob.mx – was functional on Wednesday morning.

The government’s information technology chief said Tuesday that it is intended to register seniors who live in medium-sized and large cities. César Vélez said that seniors who register will be subsequently contacted by government employees known as servants of the nation and given a vaccination appointment date and location.

López-Gatell said that seniors who live in parts of the country without internet access will be contacted by members of the government’s “roadrunner” vaccination brigades to inform them about when and where they can be vaccinated.

But it’s not only seniors who live outside large cities and towns who are likely to have trouble accessing the online vaccination platform.

More than 7.5 million seniors don’t have an internet connection in their home, according to the national statistics agency Inegi. The figure accounts for about half of the nation’s 15.4 million seniors.

Family members of the elderly are likely to be called upon to complete the registration process but some of them are also likely to face difficulties logging on. According to Inegi, 99 million people live in urban areas in Mexico and 36.9 million of them are not connected to the internet at home.

Of those who are unconnected, 44.1% live in just six states: México state, Puebla, Jalisco, Veracruz, Mexico City and Guanajuato.

López-Gatell said website response indicates people recognize the importance of getting vaccinated.

More than 5.5 million people in México state, which ranks second in the country for coronavirus cases and Covid-19 deaths, are not connected to the internet at home, meaning that they will have to use mobile internet service, internet cafes or other alternatives to register themselves or their loved ones on the seniors’ vaccination website.

The poor, many of whom live in crowded conditions that have spurred the spread of the coronavirus, are likely to face the most difficulty in getting online.

However, López-Gatell was confident on Tuesday that a large number of senior citizens will be inoculated quickly once the process begins. He estimated that the 3 million older adults who live in rural areas will be vaccinated in just one week through the efforts of 20,000 vaccination brigades.

The government announced in early January that teams of a dozen people — four welfare officials, two healthcare workers, four military guards and two volunteers — would provide the vaccine to seniors at community centers and in their homes. At the time there were to be 10,000 such brigades. As of Tuesday, the number has been doubled.

Meanwhile, the immunization of health workers is proceeding slowly due to the lack of vaccines in the country. Only 2,027 shots of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine were administered on Tuesday, according to Health Ministry data.

More than 677,000 vaccines doses have been administered since the vaccination program began on December 24 but only 45,748 of those doses were second shots of the Pfizer vaccine. That means that the vast majority of health workers don’t have the fuller protection provided by the two shots, and many are unlikely to get a second dose within the recommended timeframe as Mexico waits for Pfizer to restart delivery of shipments following the upgrade of its production facility in Belgium.

The government expects to receive its next shipment of Pfizer vaccines sometime in the middle of February, and also anticipates receiving AstraZeneca/Oxford University, Sputnik V and CanSino Biologics vaccines this month.

The health regulator Cofepris granted emergency use authorization to the Sputnik vaccine, of which Mexico intends to purchase 24 million doses, on Tuesday.

López Obrador, currently sick with Covid-19, said last Friday that Mexico will receive 6 million vaccine doses this month and an additional 12 million in March. He predicted that all seniors who want to be immunized will receive at least one dose of a vaccine by the end of next month.

As preparations for a wider vaccine rollout ramp up, Mexico’s confirmed coronavirus case tally and Covid-19 death toll continue to grow.

The Health Ministry reported 4,384 new cases on Tuesday – the lowest daily tally since mid November – lifting the accumulated tally to just over 1.87 million. The death toll rose by 433 to 159,533, the third highest in the world behind those of the United States and Brazil.

Source: El Universal (sp), Milenio (sp), Forbes (sp)

Designer offers compensation for use of indigenous, Oaxacan designs

By

MND Staff

-

February 2, 2021

0

An outfit created by Zimmermann using indigenous designs from Oaxaca.

An Australian fashion brand has offered to pay compensation to indigenous artisans whose designs it was accused of plagiarizing and proposed negotiating an agreement to allow it to sell its culturally “inspired” garments.

Zimmermann, a fashion house that has stores around the world, withdrew a dress from its 2021 collection last month after facing accusations by members of the Mazatec community in the Cañada region of Oaxaca that it plagiarized the design of a traditional huipil, a loose-fitting tunic commonly worn by both indigenous and non-indigenous women in Mexico.

The cut of the company’s Riders Paneled tunic dress, the birds and flowers embroidered on it and its colors all resemble a traditional Mazatec huipil.

Zimmermann apologized for using the design “without [giving] appropriate credit to the cultural owners of this form of dress and for the offense this has caused.”

“Although the error was unintentional, when it was brought to our attention …, the item was immediately withdrawn from all Zimmermann stores and our website. We have taken steps to ensure this does not happen again in future,” it said in a social media post.

Days after the company issued its apology, members of the Oaxaca Institute of Crafts (IOA), a state government organization, spoke with Malcolm Carfrae, a fashion consultant hired by Zimmermann to liaise with Mexican artisans.

“He told us that his intention is to offer a direct apology to the artisans and the community of Huautla de Jiménez because they recognized that [the dress design] was plagiarized,” IOA director Nadia Clímaco said Monday.

“And they want to provide some economic compensation,” she said, adding that the IOA was asked to determine an appropriate amount.

“We let him know that we can’t take that decision,” Clímaco said, explaining that the institute would need to consult with the Mazatec artisans.

She said that Zimmermann subsequently sent a letter to the IOA in which the company raised the possibility of the Mazatec community granting permission for its tunic dress to be sold. (It was advertised for US $850 before being withdrawn.)

Clímaco said the fashion brand proposed commercialization “under the terms that the members of the community consider appropriate.”

The IOA chief said the proposal was taken to artisans in Huautla de Jiménez, located near the border with Puebla, because only they can decide if they want to effectively license their traditional designs. A decision could take some time because there are different opinions in the town, Clímaco said.

Some people say “my identity is priceless,” she said, while others, acknowledging the difficult economic situation they currently face, were more open to the idea of negotiating an agreement to allow Zimmermann to sell its dress.

To date there is no agreement, Clímaco said, adding that the IOA is providing legal advice to the artisans.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Remittances surpass US $40-billion mark; analysts’ outlook brightens for 2021

By

MND Staff

-

February 2, 2021

0

Mexicans working abroad sent more than US $40 billion home last year, breaking the previous record for remittances by 11.4%.

Despite the coronavirus pandemic and associated economic restrictions, Mexicans working abroad, mainly in the United States, sent $40.6 billion to Mexico in 2020, an increase of almost $4.2 billion compared to 2019 when the previous annual record of $36.44 billion was set.

Remittances increased 17.4% in December compared to the same month of 2019, rising to $3.66 billion, the highest level since March.

Generous economic support in the United States amid the pandemic, a “very competitive” dollar-peso exchange rate and a “deep contraction” of the economy and employment in Mexico may have acted as driving forces for Mexicans abroad to send more money home, according to Goldman Sachs’ chief Latin America economist Alberto Ramos.

He said the record remittances in 2020 would help offset tourism sector losses. Remittances, over 95% of which came from the United States, accounted for about 3.8% of GDP last year, according to calculations by economists.

Money sent to Mexico from abroad was even more important last year than it is usually as the economy slumped by 8.5% and many people lost their jobs or saw their income fall considerably.

Analysts are forecasting a better 2021 in economic terms, even though Mexico currently faces a new peak of the coronavirus pandemic with no end in clear sight.

Thirty-six groups of Mexican and foreign analysts and economic experts consulted by the central bank are predicting, on average, growth of 3.5% this year, up from a 3.44% average response in the Bank of México’s previous survey. The consensus forecast for 2022 is 2.5% growth, slightly lower than the 2.6% previously predicted.

Internal economic conditions such as market weakness and uncertainty were cited as barriers to growth by 44% of those consulted by the central bank while 31% said that internal political uncertainty and insecurity could hinder the expansion of the economy. Only 10% of analysts cited external factors as a hindrance to growth.

About two-thirds of those consulted said that now is not a good time to invest in Mexico while only 12% said the opposite. The remainder expressed doubt about whether now is a good time or not to invest.

The federal government has been criticized for not being very investor-friendly, especially in the energy sector.

The analysts and economic experts predict that US $25.45 billion in direct foreign investment will flow into Mexico this year, an amount slightly higher than their previous forecast.

Source: El Financiero (sp), El Universal (sp)

Authorities in Baja California Sur say no to 10-day Baja XL Rally

By

Michelle Aguilar

-

February 2, 2021

0

Rally racers Monday in Loreto, Baja California Sur.

The Baja XL off-road rally race that runs through Baja California and Baja California Sur every two years is known as an “anything goes” sort of race, with few restrictions.

But as far as Baja California Sur officials are concerned, nothing goes this year due to the high coronavirus risk and they reacted swiftly to turn the racers back out of the state after the event kicked off last Friday in Baja California.

Civil Protection officials working with local police and the military intercepted drivers in towns along the rally route around one of the race’s Baja California Sur checkpoints in Guerrero Negro. In the town of San Ignacio, about 150 kilometers south of the checkpoint, about 50 drivers were detained and told they could no longer continue.

Authorities took down drivers’ information and then escorted them in their cars back to the Baja California border.

Drivers were left with little information about what to do next except for that on the event’s Facebook page, which informed them that authorities were aiming to turn them back north and they should try to to get to the nearest checkpoint.

This year’s rally, which began last Friday, has about 100 teams registered.

Some drivers’ objections that they had brought evidence of negative Covid-19 tests fell on deaf ears, as authorities said that the event itself was in violation of the state’s restrictions against large gatherings.

Civil Protection official Carlos Godínez told the newspaper Tribuna de Los Cabos that the operation to detain drivers was put into place as soon as officials realized that the rally was happening. He said that organizers had not obtained permission for the event.

Godénez also said the same criteria being applied to the local population regarding Covid-19 sanitary protocols would also apply to people coming from outside the state.

According to a notice posted by Baja XL organizers on their Facebook page, they were summoned to police headquarters in the town of Villa Alberto on Sunday and told that authorities would begin turning cars back starting that day.

Event organizers warned drivers on the Facebook page to “be prepared for a turnaround order.”

But for many participants, the rally carried on. Photos were posted to Facebook Monday of rally vehicles near Loreto.

The event, which usually begins and ends in Los Angeles, California, and does a large loop through Mexico, moved its starting point to Tecate, Baja California, this year, ironically because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The rally is scheduled to finish on February 7 in Tijuana.

Sources: El Sudcaliforniano (sp), Tribuna de Los Cabos (sp)

Corporate deep-sea mining dreams threaten Mexico’s marine life

By

Shannon Collins

-

February 2, 2021

0

Relicanthus sp., one of many creatures found in a proposed deep-sea mining area in the eastern Clarion-Clipperton Zone. Diva Amon

Until recently, very little was known about the deep sea. Beyond the Midnight Zone — 1,000 and 4,000 meters below the water’s surface, where no sunlight penetrates — it was largely assumed that the seabed was essentially barren, barring a few creatures that generate their own light.

Evolution was thought to rely on the energy of the sun, which cannot penetrate more than 1,000 meters down, meaning that life should not be able to evolve on the seafloor. This was the commonly held view until 1977, when marine biologists near the Galapagos Islands discovered hydrothermal vents teeming with life. In a nod of poetic justice to Charles Darwin himself, this new information sent the marine biology community into a frenzy.

It became apparent that life could evolve in both the Abyssal Zone — between 4,000 and 6,000 meters below the surface — and the Hadal Zone — anything more than 6,000 meters below the surface — in conditions which hitherto it was thought that no life on Earth could survive.

In 1982, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea established the Law of the Sea Treaty, a document that stated that the world’s oceans should be preserved for the future as part of “the common heritage of mankind.” This same UN convention also took the initial steps in the establishment of the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the regulatory body overseeing the exploration and exploitation of minerals in the international seabed.

But far from safeguarding the oceans from the destructive effects of human activities, the ISA has largely disregarded environmental concerns and shown itself to facilitate access to deep-sea mining companies, entering 30 15-year contracts with countries across the globe that license the exploration of the deep seabed for minerals, 18 of which are in the Clarion-Clipperton zone, off the west coast of Mexico.

The Clarion-Clipperton Zone, in international waters, lies between Hawaii and Mexico.

The main draw for deep-sea mining companies is an abundance of polymetallic nodules found on the deepwater plains, containing copper, manganese, cobalt, and nickel — all crucial in modern batteries — in greater concentrations than have previously been found on land.

At full capacity, mining companies expect to dredge thousands of square miles per year, and even the most conservative guesses at the impact of such an operation suggest that huge swathes of the seabed will be covered in sediment, likely resulting in the destruction of entire habitats.

To date, there are 16 contracts sanctioning the exploration of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, half of which are split between just four private entities, including the United States arms manufacturer Lockheed-Martin. An extensive — and damning — report by Greenpeace in late 2020 criticized the murky corporate practices surrounding the acquisition of contracts by these parent companies, raising questions of accountability and transparency.

Meanwhile, U.S.-based Odyssey Marine Exploration, through its Mexican subsidiary Exploraciones Oceanicas, is pushing forth with its proposed phosphate seabed mining in the Mexican Exclusive Economic Zone, despite two rejected permits in 2016 and 2018. Located 40 kilometers off the Pacific Coast of Baja California Sur are an estimated 588 million tonnes of phosphate ore, which Odyssey believes is an essential resource to give Mexico sovereignty over the production of its food.

Also located off the coast of Baja California Sur is a diverse marine ecosystem that is crucial to the survival of the thousands of grey whales that migrate there to give birth to their young, as well as to blue whales, humpback whales, and the endangered loggerhead turtle. The large dredging ships that would be used to extract the phosphate would disturb an area roughly equivalent to 60% of Mexico City.

Alex Olivera from the Center for Biological Diversity explains how this “deep-sea mining project is a threat to whales, turtles and other marine species of interest to commercial fishing. The area is of great importance for the loggerhead turtles and is within the migration route of the gray whales.

If it is carried out, there will be environmental impacts due to the dredging of the seafloor by removing all organisms and resuspending the sediments, which likely contain elements that are toxic to the environment.”

But who really stands to gain from such an endeavor? Given the harmful effects of phosphate on the environment, it would seem that governments should be searching for a less harmful solution to increasing food demands — one which does not rely on the potential destruction of the seabed.

At this level, however, the problem is bogged down in the prehistoric belief that all investment is good investment. As such, mining companies are simply unwilling to engage with the future ramifications of deep-sea mining, pursuing material gain as a short-term solution that trumps untold long-term consequences. Governments, largely, are unwilling and unable to hold these multinational behemoths to account, especially where locations are politically, geographically and economically removed from the countries and states which will bear the brunt of the impact.

The leading proponents of deep-sea mining, in particular, present themselves as the only viable alternative to terrestrial mining, which has historically caused a litany of social and political inequities across the globe and has had a hugely harmful environmental impact.

Companies such as DeepGreen, a Canadian deep-sea mining firm, argue that some biodiversity loss is inevitable and should be seen as a small sacrifice to make to mitigate the harmful effects of terrestrial mining, though there is, in fact, little evidence that deep-sea mining is a necessary evil for the transition to sustainable economies, particularly if governments pay heed to the urgent need for efficient distribution of resources and increasingly circular economies.

And yet it is abundantly clear that the problem is not merely philosophical but is in fact a distressing reality that threatens to destroy one of the final relatively untouched ecosystems on the planet. Most of us are already familiar with the laundry list of damages that have already been wreaked upon the ocean, not the least of which are overfishing, pollution and the increasing prevalence of microplastics in food chains and water supplies. Recently there is the shocking discovery that plastic particles can be found in the embryos of unborn children.

The deep ocean represents more than 95% of habitable space on Earth, and yet, for the most part, we know as little about it as we do the furthest reaches of the galaxy. To embark on a mission predicated on its partial destruction for capital gain seems the pinnacle of madness and will likely only exacerbate biodiversity loss and ecosystem destruction already being witnessed on the land.

Shannon Collins is an environment correspondent at Ninth Wave Global, an environmental organization and think-tank. She writes from Campeche.

Mexico protests another Paris auction of archaeological artifacts

By

MND Staff

-

February 2, 2021

0

Some of the items that will go on the block at Christie's auction house.

An auction of archaeological artifacts in Paris has once again raised the ire of the Mexican government, which has long argued that relics that rightfully belong to Mexico are being sold off illegally in the French capital.

The auction house Christie’s has scheduled an auction of 39 Mesoamerican and Andean works from “a notable European collection” for February 9.

Among the lots, referred to collectively as the “Quetzalcóatl, The Feathered Serpent” ensemble, are 33 pieces from Mexico.

The most notable are an 87-centimeter figure of fertility goddess Cihuateótl, which originated in El Zapotal, Veracruz, and has a price guide of 600,000 to 900,000 euros (US $721,000 to $1.08 million) and a Teotihuacán serpentine mask, which is valued at 350,000 to 550,000 euros (US $420,000 to $661,000).

Christie’s said on its website that the mask dates from circa A.D. 450-650 and was part of the collection of Pierre Matisse, youngest son of the famous painter Henri Matisse, for over 50 years.

A mask that is at least 14 centuries old will be auctioned at next week's event. — A mask that is at least 14 centuries old will be auctioned at next week’s event.

Daniel Salinas Córdova, a Mexican historian and archaeologist who lives in Germany and is a noted critic of the sale of Mexican artifacts abroad, took to Twitter on Friday to denounce the auction.

He also noted that the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE) and the Mexican Embassy in France had not made any comment on the upcoming auction.

Hours later, the embassy tweeted back to Salinas and thanked him for “highlighting the negative impact of these private sales.”

The embassy said that on instructions of the SRE, it had submitted a request asking for the auction to be stopped and for the origin of the pieces, “which are assets of Mexico,” to be evaluated.

Writing on his blog, Salinas said that “as expected” the provenance of the pieces, made by indigenous pre-colonial cultures including the Maya, Mexica, Toltec and Teotihuacán and which will go under the hammer next Tuesday, is “gray and unclear.”

“Although there is often a small history of the previous owners and collections to which the pieces ‘belonged’, it is not clear when and under what circumstances the pieces left their places of origin,” he wrote.

Historian and archaeologist Salinas alerted Mexican authorities to the auction.

“At least in the Mexican case, these artifacts are part of the country’s national heritage, regardless of whether they were subtracted from the country before 1970 and therefore remain outside the temporality covered by the multiple international treaties and conventions against smuggling of cultural property such as UNESCO’s from 1970.”

Salinas said that auctions like the one to be held next week are “unethical and of doubtful legality,” adding that they are “something very serious since they promote the commercialization and privatization of cultural heritage, prevent the study, enjoyment and dissemination of the artifacts and promote archaeological looting.”

After the Mexican Embassy in France said that it has asked for the auction to be stopped, INAH announced it had filed a complaint against it with the Mexicoan Attorney General’s Office (FGR).

“We will continue the fight against the illegal trafficking of cultural assets and for the recovery of Mexican heritage abroad,” INAH director Diego Prieto said on Twitter. “Traders and collectors are sheltering in the permissive laws that prevail in other countries.”

Prieto said in an interview that Mexican archaeological artifacts belong to the nation and that putting them up for sale is prohibited in Mexico. He said that INAH is working with the FGR and the SRE and would try to stop the February 9 auction and have the Mexican pieces returned to Mexico.

“But, … it’s very complicated because we face a legal disparity. We don’t want war with any country, we’re going to respect their laws but we’ll also question them and try to find the legal intricacies that allow us to win this battle,” Prieto said.

INAH director Prieto: Mexico is prepared to fight to get back its cultural relics.

He said that France assumes that items put up for sale by auction houses have been acquired in “good faith” and doesn’t question their origin whereas Mexico demands they have an “honest and legitimate origin.”

Prieto added that Mexico is working to reach agreements with France to stop the illegal trafficking of cultural artifacts.

“We were very hopeful about the statements of [French] President Emmanuel Macron, in the sense that France was going to be a country very inclined to the recovery of the heritage assets of other countries …but that hasn’t happened because of bureaucracy,” Prieto said.

“We need the French state to establish legislation … that is more amenable to the recovery of our assets. … They’ve said it with words, what we need is to see it with actions,” he said, adding that Mexico is prepared to fight to get its cultural relics back.

“The fact that something has a high degree of difficulty doesn’t mean that we won’t do it. It’s not easy but we have to keep fighting because these [cultural] goods are national treasures for us. In Mexican laws, the very fact that these pieces are in Paris, in France, in a territory distinct from their origin, is already a crime given that Mexican legislation establishes that the archaeological assets of Mexico are the inalienable and imprescriptible property of the nation.”

Mexico has previously tried to stop auctions of pre-Hispanic artifacts in Paris but failed. INAH has, however, recovered Mexican artifacts from other countries including Italy, Germany and the United States.

Source: Infobae (sp), El Comentario (sp)

Acapulco fishermen rescued off coast of Oaxaca after three weeks at sea

By

Michelle Aguilar

-

February 2, 2021

0

The three fishermen after their rescue in Oaxaca.

Three fishermen from Acapulco who were lost at sea are now safe and sound in Puerto Ángel, Oaxaca, thanks to the help of fellow fishermen who found them three weeks after they left their home and about 190 miles off course.

“Thanks go to God for putting us in the path of these people so that they would find us,” the fishermen said in a video message on social media. “By the grace of God we are alive. We appreciate the solidarity from the fishermen of Oaxaca.”

The trio was found just a few days after the navy had called off the search, which had prompted family and friends to blockade streets for hours in Acapulco’s tourist district on Monday to pressure authorities to continue searching.

When the crew set out from Las Hamacas Beach on January 12, they had planned a five-day fishing trip. But by January 15, their motor had died. Out at sea, their phones did not work, and they had no way to alert anyone.

The navy began looking for the missing vessel on January 20 after family members raised concerns that it was several days late returning.

The boat on which Acapulco fishermen drifted for three weeks.

According to Oaxaca Civil Protection officials, all three were weak from hunger and dehydration but were in good health. Their boat was towed to shore and will be taken back to Guererro by land, said Antonio Rodríguez, son of one of the rescued fishermen.

All three were expected to be transported home Tuesday, he said.

“The truth is that it’s a miracle,” said Rodríguez of the rescue. “A fisherman does not travel that far. At most they go out 80 miles.”

Sources: Milenio (sp), Excélsior (sp), La Jornada (sp), El Sol de Acapulco (sp)

Seniors invited to register online for Covid vaccination; regulator approves Sputnik V

By

MND Staff

-

February 2, 2021

0

vaccination website — Once they have registered, seniors can expect a call to schedule an appointment.

The federal government has launched an online platform where people aged 60 and over can register their details in order to be vaccinated against Covid-19.

César Vélez, the government’s information technology chief, said Tuesday that the platform – mivacuna.salud.gob.mx – is intended to register seniors who live in medium-sized and large cities.

(The website was not functional on Tuesday as several attempts to reach it were unsuccessful.)

Vélez explained the online registration process at the government’s morning news conference and stressed that the data collected by the platform will be secure.

Seniors will be asked to provide their CURP identity number and after verifying that their personal details are correct should click on a tab that reads “Quiero vacunarme” (I want to get vaccinated.)

They will then be asked to provide their full address, telephone number and email address, if they have one. After they have completed the registration process, seniors will be issued a digital receipt with a unique file number.

When the government has Covid-19 vaccines available to inoculate seniors – vaccination of that sector of the population is expected to commence sometime this month – government employees known as servants of the nation will call people who have registered and give them a vaccination appointment date and location.

Vélez said that people should eat and take any required medications before attending their appointments and recommended arriving at the designated vaccination center 15 minutes early.

Seniors will not be permitted to choose the vaccine with which they wish to be inoculated, he said. President López Obrador said in January that the two-shot Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine will be used to inoculate seniors who live in isolated areas, Russia’s two-shot Sputnik V vaccine will be used in towns and medium-sized cities and China’s CanSino Biologics shot will be used in large cities.

Also at Tuesday’s press conference, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said that Mexico has signed a contract to purchase the Sputnik V vaccine.

The announcement comes a week after López Obrador spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin and struck an agreement to acquire 24 million doses of the vaccine that Russia says is completely safe and has an efficacy rate of 91.4%.

López-Gatell presented a timetable for delivery that showed that Mexico will receive 400,000 doses in February, 1 million in March and 6 million in April. Mexico also expects to receive shipments of the Pfizer, AstraZeneca/Oxford University and CanSino vaccines this month.

The Sputnik vaccine has not been approved by the health regulator Cofepris but the deputy minister said that emergency use authorization was expected within hours.

The peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet published interim results on Tuesday of a phase 3 trial of the vaccine and said that it appears safe and effective.

“Recipients generated robust antibody responses to the spike protein. … They also showed evidence of T-cell responses, consistent with an immune response that should not quickly wane,” The Lancet said.

“… The immunity required to prevent disease arose within 18 days of the first dose. That protection applied to all age groups, including those older than 60 years …”

Alejandro Macías, an infectious disease doctor, a member of the National Autonomous University’s coronavirus commission and the federal government’s point man during the swine flu pandemic in 2009, said last week that people should trust Cofepris’ judgment on the Sputnik vaccine.

If the regulator approves it and says it’s a good vaccine, “let’s get it,” he said at a Covid-19 vaccine forum. “Of course I would get it,” Macías added.

“Its efficacy has been questioned [but] it’s safe, according to what we know, and we’ll have to trust the authorities.”

The urgent need for a wider vaccine rollout in Mexico cannot be understated: January was easily the worst month of the pandemic with almost 440,000 new cases and 32,729 Covid-19 deaths reported.

The accumulated case tally rose to just under 1.87 million on Monday with 5,448 new cases reported while Mexico’s official Covid-19 death toll increased to 159,100 with 564 additional fatalities.

Source: El Financiero (sp)

Travel council says suspending flights is not the answer to controlling pandemic

By

MND Staff

-

February 2, 2021

0

airport travelers — The World Travel and Tourism Council urges nations take a coordinated approach to save the tourism sector.

The World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) has slammed the Canadian government’s decision to suspend flights to Mexico and Caribbean countries and oblige travelers entering Canada to go into hotel quarantine, asserting that such measures are not the solution to the coronavirus crisis and will severely damage the tourism sector.

“The Canadian government’s decision to suspend all flights to Mexico and the Caribbean until April 30, and impose hotel quarantines for all arriving passengers, will cause even further damage to its travel and tourism industry, which is already in a fight for survival due to the Covid-19 pandemic,” said WTTC president and CEO Gloria Guevara.

“Blanket flight cancelations and ineffective and costly quarantines are not the solution and will only slow down the recovery of this important sector.”

Guevara, who was federal tourism minister in the second half of former president Felipe Calderón’s 2006-2012 term, called the Canadian measures “drastic” and said that they will cause “untold damage” to Canada’s travel sector, which she said creates more than 1.6 million jobs and in 2019 contributed CAD $143.9 billion to the country’s economy.

“The sector will be key to Canada’s economic recovery once the pandemic has been combatted,” she added.

Guevara said the WTTC believes that that rapid, low-cost testing on departure for all travelers, along with the implementation of a contact-tracing regime is the only way to save the tourism sector.

“These simple and effective measures, along with observing enhanced hygiene protocols such as mask wearing and social distancing, will avoid exporting the virus and enable the free movement of travelers,” she said.

The WTTC chief asserted that quarantines should only be in place for people who tested positive for the coronavirus and therefore testing airline passengers is “absolutely critical.”

“We would also like to see a clear and detailed exit strategy, as the travel and tourism sector needs to restart now, before many businesses crumble and even more people lose their jobs,” Guevara said.

“Our latest research reveals the devastating impact Covid-19 is having on travel and tourism across North America, with between 10.8 million and 13.8 million sector jobs at serious risk. We hope the Canadian government will collaborate with other leaders around the world to agree on a more internationally coordinated approach to restart travel and save the ailing sector.”

Canada’s suspension of flights has also been criticized by Mexico’s government.

gloria guevara — Guevara: testing airline passengers is ‘absolutely critical.’

Tourism Minister Miguel Torruco said that tourism sector revenue could decrease by US $782 million as a result of the three-month suspension of flights from Canada to Mexico, while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the government hoped that the flight freeze could be lifted “as soon as possible in order to prevent a profound economic crisis in the North American region.”

Aviation experts who spoke to the Canadian Press said the flight suspension will likely cause bankruptcies in Canada’s airline sector and permanent closures of airports and travel agencies.

The announcement that flights to Mexico and the Caribbean were to be halted “was the nail in the coffin for the airline and tourism business,” said Robert Kokonis, founder and managing director of aviation consulting firm AirTrav Inc.

“We’re going to see bankruptcy filings, you might even see a few outright failures. … This will definitely finish off hundreds of travel agents, if not thousands, across the country.”

John Gradek, a lecturer at McGill University and the head of its Global Aviation Leadership Program, said the airlines Sunwing and Transat were most at risk of bankruptcy because of their dependence on flights to so-called sun destinations. But the former denied that was the case.

The Canadian Airports Council said that airports were burning through cash reserves, laying off staff and taking on additional debt as demand for their services has plummeted 85% to 90% since spring.

“Today, there is nothing left to cut, yet the restrictions keep piling on,” said president Daniel-Robert Gooch.

Kokonis said he was disappointed that the announcement of the new Canadian restrictions wasn’t accompanied by an “announcement of aid” for the travel sector.

Meanwhile, Tourism Minister Torruco is attempting to have tourism declared an essential economic activity in Mexico to protect the sector while the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage here and in many other countries.

The Tourism Ministry said in a statement Monday that Torruco made a submission to the economy and health ministers asking them to consider declaring tourism essential.

The tourism minister highlighted that tourism generated annual revenue of US $172 billion before the pandemic, contributed to 8.7% of Mexico’s GDP and provided direct employment for 4.4 million people.

Source: El Universal (sp), El Economista (sp), The Canadian Press (en)