The president presented an analysis in September that showed he or the 4T were attacked by 66% of opinion columns in eight newspapers.
The coronavirus pandemic, the associated economic crisis and media attacks on the government were cited by President López Obrador on Monday as three “obstacles” he has faced since taking office two years ago.
Speaking on the eve of the second anniversary of being sworn in as Mexico’s 65th president, López Obrador said “the most difficult” problem he has encountered has been the pandemic, which as of Monday had officially claimed 105,940 lives.
“[It has been] very painful, it hurts a lot. That’s what has affected us the most,” he said.
The president and his government have been widely criticized for not enforcing a strict lockdown, not advocating more forcefully for face masks and not testing widely for Covid-19. But López Obrador has continually defended the response to the pandemic, saying recently that his administration has implemented a “very good strategy.”
He said Monday that the government has also responded well to the coronavirus-induced economic crisis even though GDP is forecast to slump almost 10% in 2020.
“It was enough to not follow the neoliberal formula of bailing out those on top,” Lopez Obrador said. “We started by rescuing the people, helping those at the bottom and we’re coming out [of the crisis].”
The president said that attacks by the media and the “conservative reaction” to his government were a distant third and “marginal” obstacle he has faced over the past two years.
“It has not been very significant,” López Obrador said, apparently forgetting about the countless hours he has spent denouncing reports by what he calls the prensa fifi (elitist press) and attacking government critics at the lengthy morning press conferences he fronts every weekday.
He downplayed the impact of the protest camp set up in Mexico City’s central square in September by an organization known as the National Anti-AMLO Front, saying that the number of protesters had dwindled to 50 from a high of just 200.
He said previously that he was happy people were protesting against him because it meant his government was changing Mexico for the better.
López Obrador, whose administration is dubbed the fourth transformation or 4T because it claims to be implementing a radical change comparable to those brought about by independence from Spain, the Mexican revolution and a 19th century liberal reform, will deliver a speech Tuesday afternoon to mark the second anniversary of his rule.
Two recent polls show that he retains strong support two years after taking office following his landslide victory at the 2018 election. A poll commissioned by the newspaper El Universal found that López Obrador has an approval rating of 64% while another for El Economista found 58.4% support.
Investigators at the scene where a baby had been abandoned.
A newborn infant’s dead body was found Monday in a garbage bag at a dumpsite in the city of Oaxaca.
Authorities found the abandoned corpse at an open-air dump on a street near a market after receiving an anonymous call alerting them to the body.
The incident comes just days after another similar one in the city: on Saturday, authorities found a newborn’s decomposing body on the shores of the Atoyac River, also inside a garbage bag. Forensic experts estimated that the infant had been alive for about two weeks before it was beaten and asphyxiated and then abandoned.
In an unrelated incident in Veracruz, a baby’s corpse was found Sunday among rocks at the Paseo del Río de Orizaba riverwalk.
And on October 25, the Red Cross rescued an abandoned newborn in the municipality of Miahuatlán, Oaxaca.
Teachers who had been blocking train tracks in Michoacán for 59 days agreed to end their protests on Monday after the federal government committed to sitting down with them to discuss their demands.
Teachers affiliated with the dissident CNTE union, who have been protesting to demand the payment of late salaries, bonuses and scholarships as well as the automatic allocation of jobs to graduates, lifted blockades in the municipalities of Uruapan, Pátzcuaro and Morelia after Interior Minister Olga Sánchez agreed to meet with them.
At a meeting on Monday afternoon, the interior minister told a group of disgruntled teachers led by local CNTE leader Benjamín Hernández that in a democratic country there is space to discuss differences and work together toward solutions.
Accompanied by Michoacán Governor Silvano Aureloes, Deputy Interior Minister Rabindranath Salazar and education officials, Sánchez said the government is working so that nobody has to “take violent actions or actions at the margins of the law in order to be heard.”
“One of our priorities is always to listen to the people. Our obligation is to govern with the people, for the people and by the people” she said.
Interior Minister Sánchez: ‘Looking for respect and social peace.’
“Our presence here today is clear evidence that we are doing that. … The government’s new policy to attend to conflicts is based at all times on the use of reason, and nothing by the use of force,” Sánchez said.
“… I’m confident that the dialogue that we’re beginning today will lead us to reaching agreements and above all maintaining conditions of respect and social peace.”
The interior minister said on Twitter Monday night that agreements had been reached with the teachers who maintained the blockades but she didn’t reveal their exact nature.
“In an act of confidence toward the government of Mexico, via mediation of the Interior Ministry, the train tracks in Michoacán were freed,” Sánchez wrote. “At a meeting we established agreements with the teachers and Governor Silvano Aureoles to strengthen the rule of law and guarantee investment.”
Aureoles also acknowledged the agreements on Twitter, writing that his government hoped that they would be complied with by all parties and that the tracks – which he said were of strategic importance for economic development in Michoacán and the nation as a whole – would remain unblocked.
The newspaper Milenio reported that freight trains will begin traveling in Michoacán on Thursday after rail authorities conduct safety checks of the sections that were blocked.
It said that more than 4,500 containers were stranded at the port in Lázaro Cárdenas, one of Mexico’s most important maritime facilities.
The almost two-month-long blockades have cost industry billions of pesos. Oscar del Cueto, CEO of rail operator Kansas City Southern de México, said in late October that the company he leads had incurred losses of 300 million pesos (US $15 million) and that industry had lost an estimated 5 billion pesos (US $249.5 million).
Given that the blockades continued for another month, those losses could reasonably be doubled.
Police in Mexico City have arrested four suspects in the case of a double murder of a French restaurant owner and his Mexican business partner whose bodies were found in a southern borough of the capital on Saturday.
The bound and bloody bodies of dual French-Mexican citizen Baptiste Jacques Daniel Lormand, owner of a restaurant/cantina in Mexico City’s upscale Polanco neighborhood and a similar establishment in the historic center, and Luis Orozco were found on a vacant lot in the borough of Tlalpan.
Mexico City Police Chief Omar García Harfuch announced on Twitter Monday that a person possibility related to the murders had been arrested in the borough of Magdalena Contreras, which adjoins Tlapan.
Above a photo of the male suspect, García wrote that the arrest “confirms the line of investigation previously presented at a press conference.” Police announced three more arrests Tuesday morning and the discovery of a warehouse containing liquor and firearms. Some of the liquor had a retail value of 70,000 pesos (US $3,500) per bottle.
The police chief said Sunday that there was evidence that Lormand, a 45-year-old Parisian who was a long-term resident of Mexico City, and Orozco had traveled to a rural part of southern Mexico City in separate vehicles late Thursday to sell bottles of high-end wine or liquor.
Slain business partners Orozco, left, and Lormand.
García said that it appeared that the men met with people who stole the alcohol and murdered them. Their vehicles were found near the lot where their bodies were located.
“The investigation indicates that they wanted to rob them of the merchandise that they were offering for sale,” García said.
He and other officials denied that the case was one of kidnapping or related to extortion, a problem that many business owners in Mexico City face.
The police chief said that there have been several cases in southern Mexico City in which people have been attacked while trying to buy or sell merchandise that was advertised online.
“We have identified a modus operandi of setting up fake transactions of goods advertised to the public, in which at the moment that a face-to-face meeting is set up to supposedly carry out the transaction, the sellers are attacked and sometimes killed,” García said.
A spokesman for the Mexico City Attorney General’s Office (FGJ) said that Lormand may have started selling expensive alcohol because the restaurant industry was hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic or because normal channels for distributing high-end wine and liquor were disrupted by the virus outbreak.
“The economic situation has of course been substantially altered by the pandemic, and in many cases people have turned to other activities,” Ulises Lara said.
A friend of Lormand told the newspaper El País that the Frenchman recently bought alcohol worth about 500,000 pesos (US $25,000) from a restaurant that closed and had been in the process of reselling it.
Lara said Monday that the FGJ was continuing to collect information about the business activities of Lormand and Orozco. He said authorities were looking at the two men’s telephone records to determine whom they had communicated with prior to their deaths.
According to media reports, the man arrested on Monday was detained in possession of drugs, firearms and Courvoisier cognac that Lormand and Orozco may have been selling.
It was unclear why the men were murdered if the people they met with only wanted to steal the alcohol.
Writing in the El Universal newspaper, security analyst Alejandro Hope contended that the case has a “structural cause – impunity.”
Marchers in Polanco demand justice in the case of the double homicide.
In a column under the headline, “Life is worthless,” Hope wrote that “killing is very cheap” in Mexico. “The probabilities that a killer will be punished are very low.”
The murders were condemned by members of Mexico City’s French community who along with restaurant industry workers marched on Monday afternoon from a traffic circle in Polanco to the French embassy, located in the same neighborhood. Dressed in white and holding placards with messages such as ¡Ya Basta! (Enough Already!) they called for justice for the two slain men.
French Ambassador Jean-Pierre Asvazadourian wrote on Twitter, “Like our entire community, I am saddened by the murder of our countryman.”
President López Obrador also addressed the case on Monday, telling reporters at his regular news conference that justice will be served.
“Work is being done on a thoroughgoing investigation. One has to have faith that we will be able to make progress with that investigation,” he said. “Nobody will be allowed impunity.”
The government of Zacatecas announced Monday that red light restrictions would take immediate effect due to an increase in coronavirus cases.
Health Minister Gilberto Breña Cantú told a virtual press conference that Zacatecas is facing a “perfect storm” created by a range of factors.
“We have a pandemic, we have the cold season, we have the flu season, we have all the parties that are commonly held [at the end of the year],” he said.
Both coronavirus cases and Covid-19 deaths have recently increased, Breña said. Indeed, about a third of Zacatecas’ 16,780 confirmed cases were detected this month.
The health minister noted that the risk of coronavirus infection is orange light “high,” according to the federal government’s stoplight system, but explained that state authorities had reached the conclusion that the risk level is in fact already red light “maximum.”
As a result, nonessential businesses will be required to close by 7:00 p.m. and public transit services will end at 9:00 p.m. Places of worship are banned from holding services and all parties including weddings and 15th birthday celebrations are prohibited.
Parks, town squares, museums, gyms, public swimming pools, sports centers, nightclubs and bars must all close while restaurants and hotels are limited to 25% of their normal capacity.
The restrictions will remain in place for the next two weeks and apply across Zacatecas even though about three-quarters of the almost 17,000 cases detected in the state since the start of the pandemic are concentrated in just six of 58 municipalities.
Zacatecas city leads the state for cases with 4,278 as of Sunday. The next highest number of cases was detected in Guadalupe, with 3,730; followed by Fresnillo with 3,099; Sombrerete with 650; Jerez with 460; and Río Grande with 392.
Ten Zacatecas municipalities have recorded fewer than 10 confirmed cases since the start of the pandemic and two – Mezquital del Oro and Moyahua – have recorded just one each.
The northern state has recorded 1,485 Covid-19 deaths, of which almost 40% occurred this month.
Zacatecas city also leads for Covid-19 deaths with 294 followed by Fresnillo and Guadalupe with 274 and 211, respectively.
Finding the right homemade cat treat recipe may take a few taste tests.
Since my story a few weeks ago about homemade dog biscuits, I’ve been eager to make treats for my two cats and write this next article. Many of the recipes I found used canned tuna (Luna and Sissy’s favorite) as a base, and I thought they would be so pleased. Hah.
Cats are notoriously finicky, and mine have never had “treats” before: in their world, there’s wet food, kibble and the occasional creature (small lizards, big cockroaches and, sadly, the random hummingbird). Decidedly unimpressed with my first try, they batted the “treats” around and walked away.
Apparently, more research was needed.
Some cats are fussy about the size of what they’re eating and may not like anything too big. When I broke the treats I’d made into smaller, pea-size pieces, they cautiously ate them. But when presented with the option of store-bought treats or my homemade ones … well, you know what happened.
Back to the drawing board: “Kitty Pavlova,” with just two simple but tasty ingredients, seemed promising (and easy) and was met with unrestrained enthusiasm by my tasters. Should I ever again want to woo my cats with treats, this is the direction in which I’ll go. See below for the recipe.
The best meat to use for cat treats is … well, trust us, they’ll let you know.
But as I found more and more complicated recipes, I had to wonder, why bother? My cats have little interest in “pleasing” me, and I’m not trying to train them. They — like me, ahem — have no need of between-meal snacks. What’s the point?
Philosophical musings aside, should you, however, want to make treats for your feline friends, start with a protein like canned tuna in water, canned or cooked chicken or their favorite canned cat food; fresh-cooked fish is too flaky to hold together. Add an egg and some kind of binder: gelatin sheets (not Jello!), cornmeal or powdered milk.
Feeling creative? Try adding some manteca or other animal fat, unsalted beef, chicken or bone broth or, if you can find them at an Asian food store, dried bonito flakes. Some cats also like greens like cilantro or spinach; others love to eat catnip.
Because cats are more finicky than dogs, your knowledge of what things they already like to eat should be your guide. My cats, for instance, will happily eat corn chips if allowed, so using cornmeal as a binder seemed to make sense.
That said, I discovered my limits: if I want to give Luna and Sissy a special treat, I’ll stick to a forkful of canned tuna or some pieces of leftover chicken. Your cats will let you know what works for them.
This treat is a delicacy even for the most discerning of feline tastes.
Kitty Pavlova
Quite possibly this will work with canned cat food too. If you try it, let me know!
1 egg white
1 5-oz. can water-packed tuna, thoroughly drained OR 1 5-oz. can cooked chicken OR ½ cup shredded cooked chicken
Preheat your oven to 350 F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Beat egg white until stiff peaks form. In a separate bowl, mince and mash tuna or chicken as finely as possible.
Add two tablespoons of the whisked egg white to tuna/chicken; mix thoroughly until there are no lumps. Gently fold in remaining egg white.
Pipe or spread the mixture in lines about a half-inch wide and a quarter-inch high onto a baking sheet.
Bake about 20 minutes until dry to the touch and beginning to brown along the edges. Cool, then break into pieces. Store in airtight jars for up to a month.
Using a pastry bag makes softer mixtures easier to distribute on a baking sheet
EZ Kitty Treats
1 can cat food
Optional: pinch of catnip
Preheat oven to 375 F and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Stir catnip and canned food together to a mousse-like consistency.
Put mixture in a Ziploc bag, snip a small corner off and use it like a pastry bag to make small, evenly spaced dots on the baking sheet. Bake 8–10 minutes.
Remove from oven. (Mixture will be slightly soft.)
Once cooled, roll the half-baked mixture into tiny quarter-inch balls.
Store in an airtight container.
An optional addition to Tuna Biscuits is a perennial favorite: catnip
Tuna Biscuits
1 5-oz. can tuna packed in water, well-drained
1 whole egg
3 to 4 Tbsp. cornmeal OR whole wheat flour
1 Tbsp. powdered milk
Optional: 1 tsp. catnip
Preheat oven to 400 F. Combine everything in a bowl and mix until the consistency of cookie dough.
Pinch into tiny bite-sized pieces (about one-quarter teaspoon each) or press into thin graham-cracker-sized layers onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet.
Bake about 15 minutes till firm but not dried out. Cool.
Break layers into small pieces. Store refrigerated in an airtight container for 10–14 days.
Taste-tested and cat-mom approved.
No-Bake Turkey-Pumpkin Kitty Treats
⅓ cup canned pumpkin (no added salt or sugar)
¼ cup cooked turkey or chicken meat
Enough gelatin powder or leaf to set 3 fl. oz of liquid (strengths vary, check your gelatin packet for how much to use)
Water
Strain pumpkin in a cheesecloth or tea towel, then squeeze to extract as much of the liquid as you can. Follow directions for dissolving gelatin with water.
Blitz meat in blender or food processor until it forms fine crumbs.
In small saucepan, combine meat, pumpkin and gelatin. Heat gently on low heat — don’t boil — adding water if needed to prevent mixture from getting too dry and sticking. Aim for toothpaste consistency or a little thicker. Once gelatin has completely dissolved, remove from heat.
Cool about 10 minutes; mixture will be sticky and soft.
Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil or parchment paper. Roll mixture into pea-sized balls and place on baking sheet. Refrigerate to set for 8–24 hours, depending on gelatin.
Once fully set, store refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 1 week.
Janet Blaser has been a writer, editor and storyteller her entire life and feels fortunate to be able to write about great food, amazing places, fascinating people and unique events. Her first book, Why We Left: An Anthology of American Women Expats, is available on Amazon. Contact Janet or read her blog at whyweleftamerica.com.
Finance Minister Herrera: projects will have an 'immediate impact' on employment and investment.
The federal government and the private sector presented details on Monday of an agreement to collaborate on the construction of 29 infrastructure projects worth 228 billion pesos (US $11.3 billion).
Finance Minister Arturo Herrera said that 10 projects worth a combined 43 billion pesos are already underway and that the other 19 are to start soon.
“The idea is … to announce the projects that are very close to starting,” he told reporters at President López Obrador’s morning press conference, asserting that they will have an “immediate impact” on employment and investment.
He said the largest new project is a 47-billion-peso natural gas plant to be built by the Mexican energy company IEnova in Ensenada, Baja California. Construction is slated to commence in January 2021.
Among the other projects presented Monday were the 20-billion peso Naucalpan-Ecatepec highway in México state, the 4.2-billion-peso Cuapiaxtla-Cuacnopalan highway in Tlaxcala and Puebla, a 9-billion-peso gas pipeline on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and the 5.2-billion-peso Silao-San Miguel de Allende highway in Guanajuato.
Business leader Carlos Salazar said the bundle of 29 infrastructure projects will create 400,000 jobs.
There are also several Federal Electricity Commission projects and two projects that are part of the construction of a desalination plant in Los Cabos, Baja California Sur.
Including the projects presented Monday, the government has agreements with the private sector to build 68 infrastructure projects with an investment of 525 billion pesos (US $26 billion) Herrera said. Details of 39 of them were presented in early October.
The president of the Business Coordinating Council (CCE), an umbrella organization representing 12 business groups, said that the new bundle of 29 infrastructure projects will create 400,000 jobs.
“This is the number we need to recoup the [formal sector] jobs that were lost [due to the pandemic],” Carlos Salazar said.
He said that the investment associated with the 29 projects is equivalent to 2.3% of Mexico’s GDP.
Salazar also said that the best way to strengthen the economy – which in 2020 appears likely to suffers its worst contraction since the Great Depression due to the coronavirus pandemic and associated restrictions – is for both the private sector and the government to invest in it.
“We [the private sector] are very interested … in supporting the kind of projects” announced today, he said.
The CCE chief added that the government and private sector are working on another bundle of projects but didn’t say when it would be presented.
President López Obrador has ruled out any possibility that a United States company will be allowed to proceed with a brewery project in Mexicali, Baja California, that the federal government halted after a referendum in March.
During a visit to Mexicali on Friday, López Obrador once again asserted that the brewery will not be allowed to open and publicly instructed Environment Minister María Luisa Albores to ensure that is the case.
“The decision was taken that a permit allowing this plant to operate would not be granted and that [remains] the commitment. I say it here with complete clarity so that there is no disinformation. We keep our word; we’re not the same as the doublespeak, double-moral conservatives. Consistency is fundamental for us,” he said.
“A consultation was carried out and the people said … they didn’t want this brewery to be built and to operate due to the lack of water in Mexicali, in Baja California [and] in the north of the country,” López Obrador said.
The president’s remarks came after he said earlier this month that there was concern in the state that the brewery would be allowed to go ahead despite citizens’ emphatic rejection of it in the March referendum.
López Obrador told reporters at his morning news conference on November 19 that brewing companies should instead seek to produce in locations in Mexico’s southeast where water is far more abundant than in the country’s comparatively barren north.
If the Mexicali brewery project – where Constellation intended to brew Modelo brand beers for the United States market – was approved, Mexico would be exporting “water that we don’t have,” the president said.
“There has to be a completely different policy. [There should be] permits for … breweries but on the Grijalva and Usumacinta [rivers in Tabasco and Chiapas]. Look at how much water [they have],” López Obrador said.
“The permits can be given there because look at how the floods affect us [there]. But in the center and the north of the country there’s no water and what has to be guaranteed is that there is no shortage of water for human use, … that’s the first thing and in second place is agriculture.”
The US $1.4-billion project was about 70% complete when construction was halted in March.
For the second time in less than a month and four days before a scheduled employee strike over nonpayment of wages, the financially beleaguered airline Interjet abruptly cancelled its flights this past weekend and into Monday morning, reportedly due to a lack of fuel.
Nineteen flights scheduled for today between Mexico City and Cancún, Monterrey, Cozumel, Guadalajara and Mérida were canceled this morning. On the weekend, 24 other flights between Mexico City and Cancún, Monterrey and Cozumel were also canceled with little notice to passengers.
Interjet employees interviewed by the newspaper La Jornada said the cancellation of flights came as a surprise to them. As of this morning, Interjet still had flights scheduled in and out of Mexico City for this evening, all occurring after 5 p.m.
This is the second time Interjet has had to cancel flights due to the inability to purchase fuel. Passengers flying between October 31 and November 2 also had their flights canceled with little warning, affecting 3,099 travelers.
The airline has been plagued with setbacks throughout 2020, stemming from debts going back nearly a decade, and worsened by losses in income this year due to the coronavirus pandemic’s effects on the airline industry.
It currently owes unpaid wages going back five pay periods to more than 5,000 workers, who are threatening to strike starting on Friday. Earlier this month, a federal judge greenlighted a lawsuit against Interjet by Aeropuertos y Servicios Auxiliares (ASA), the federally owned company that manages about two dozen airports and provides aviation fuel, in order to recover unpaid fuel debts.
The consumer protection agency Profeco recently issued a warning to Mexicans not to use Interjet, citing its tendency to change or cancel flights with little warning, saying the fault in the previous incident in October was “completely attributable to the airline.” In 2019, Profeco received 769 complaints from consumers against Interjet, 322 of them related to changed or canceled flights, refunds, or advertised discounts.
As of November 3, said Profeco, it had received twice as many complaints, 1,542 in total, 904 of which were ticketing related. The chief complaint was over flight cancellations.
In February, the organization Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity said it had found evidence that Interjet owes more than 3 billion pesos (US $150 million) in taxes and other debts to various federal agencies, including the Federal Tax Administration (SAT) and ASA.
The airline dismissed the report as “imprecise” and said it had reached agreements with SAT to pay off its debts. However, the tax agency’s chief, Raquel Buenrostro, told reporters that the only agreement it had made with Interjet was that it should pay income and sales tax debt dating back to 2013.
The coronavirus case tally for November exceeded that of October on Sunday, making this month the second worst for new cases since the start of the pandemic.
The Health Ministry reported 6,388 new cases on Sunday, pushing the accumulated number to 1,107,071.
The average daily tally reported this month is 6,280 – 7% higher than the October average. The only month in which more new coronavirus cases were reported was July with 198,548, or 6,404 per day.
After the July peak, new case numbers declined 12% in August to 174,923 and decreased again in September, falling 18% to 143,656. However, they increased 26.5% in October to 181,746.
Coronavirus cases and deaths in Mexico as reported by day. milenio
Meanwhile, Mexico’s official Covid-19 death toll rose to 105,655 on Sunday with 196 additional fatalities reported. In the first 29 days of this month, the Health Ministry registered 13,902 fatalities for an average of 479 per day.
July was also the worst month for Covid-19 fatalities with health authorities reporting 18,919, or an average of 610 per day.
Reported deaths declined 6% in August to 17,726 and fell an additional 25% in September to 13,232. However, they rose 7% in October to 14,107.
This month’s death toll will in all likelihood pass the October total when the Health Ministry reports the latest coronavirus data on Monday night. If that occurs, November will become the fourth deadliest month of the pandemic after July, June and August.
The Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington is currently projecting that Mexico’s official Covid-19 death toll will rise to just over 120,000 by the end of the year and almost 144,000 by March 1, 2021.
With universal face mask usage, there would be about 8,500 fewer deaths by March 1, according to IHME projections.
Estimated active cases by state as of Sunday evening. milenio
The federal government has been a reluctant advocate for face masks, triggering criticism from numerous health experts and former health ministers.
“The government should make it clear that the use of face masks does help to reduce the spread of the virus,” said 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.
The November increase in numbers brought a warning Monday from the World Health Organization, whose director-general said Mexico was “in a bad situation.”
When both cases and deaths increase, it’s “a very serious problem,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who urged Mexico to take the situation seriously.
However, he based his warning on information that was at odds with official figures, claiming that both new cases and deaths had doubled over the course of three weeks.
WHO director-general Tedros said the situation in Mexico was ‘worrying.’
While the numbers for some days did indeed double in the second half of the month, overall case numbers were up 23% and deaths by 9% compared to the first half of the month.
But with winter approaching, case numbers rising again, hospitals in some states already filling up with coronavirus patients and the federal government ruling out any possibility of enforcing a strict lockdown, it appears inevitable that Mexico will see high numbers of Covid-19 deaths in the coming weeks and months, deepening the significant pain the pandemic has already inflicted on the nation.
Indeed, the real number of Covid-19 deaths is likely already considerably higher than the totals the IHME projects Mexico will reach by the end of the year and next March.
The Health Ministry reported in late October that the number of deaths in Mexico between January 1 and September 26 was more that 193,000 higher than the average for the same period in recent years. More than 139,000 of the “excess deaths” by September 26 – when the official coronavirus death toll was just over 76,000 – were judged to have been caused by Covid-19.
