The tourism sector in Quintana Roo has launched a new promotional campaign to attract visitors to the Caribbean coast state once it reopens for business on June 8.
Designed by the Atelier hotel group and officially presented at a virtual event on Wednesday, the campaign is called #Come2MexicanCaribbean in English and #VenAlCaribeMexicanoX2 in Spanish.
The aim is to attract Mexican and international visitors who are eager to travel after being cooped up in the “great lockdown” to limit the spread of Covid-19.
Eleven different destinations in Quintana Roo will be promoted, with special deals and discounts on offer to lure tourists to the state’s white sand beaches and turquoise waters.
Roberto Cintrón Gómez, president of the Hotel Association of Cancún, Puerto Morelos and Isla Mujeres, said that employees will return to work next Monday to prepare hotels and resorts to receive guests starting June 8 and to get up to speed with what will be required of them in the “new normal.”
Atelier commercial director Vicente Madrigal said that the discounts and promotions on offer will revolve around the number two but he stressed that there won’t be two-for-one deals.
It’s not about “cheapening the destination,” he said. “What we’re asking is for the promotions to be related to the number two.”
Participating hotels will offer two free nights to guests paying for two or more nights, two children will be able to stay for free with two paying adults and car rental companies will offer two free days to customers already paying for at least two days’ hire.
Participating golf courses and businesses offering spa treatments will offer 20% discounts to tourists while some theme parks will in fact offer two-for-one deals on entry. Some restaurants and bars will also offer deals and discounts to visitors.
More than 150 hotels and several theme parks, tour operators, golf courses, car rental companies and restaurants, among other tourism-oriented businesses, have indicated that they will participate in the new campaign.
The destination will be more “accessible” for potential tourists, said Atelier CEO Olivier Reinhart. “Take advantage because it won’t last forever.”
The federal government is not interested in testing Mexicans en masse for Covid-19 because doing so would be “useless, impracticable and very expensive,” Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said on Wednesday.
He also said that testing all Mexicans for the infectious disease would be “a waste of time, effort and resources.”
“We’re not interested … [in testing] the 130 million people who live in Mexico,” the deputy minister said during a virtual appearance before federal senators.
López-Gatell, the federal government’s coronavirus czar, said that a false perception has developed that Mexico is the only country in the world that has not identified all coronavirus cases within its borders.
However, “nobody knows” how many cases they have in their country, he said, adding that “this should never be interpreted as a phenomenon of deliberate negligence or incompetence.”
His remarks came in response to a question posed by a ruling party senator.
“Why are you applying 0.4 tests per 1,000 inhabitants [the rate is now 1.9] when the [OECD] average is 22?” asked Morena’s Ricardo Monreal.
“That could have created a significant underreporting of infections,” he charged.
Alejandra Reynoso of the National Action Party (PAN) pursued an even more aggressive line of questioning.
“Aren’t you ashamed that we’re the country that has applied the least tests?” she asked López-Gatell. “Where does this controversial decision leave us in the [eyes of] the world?”
The deputy minister dismissed the questions, telling Reynoso that she has “scant familiarity” with the public health system.
Other PAN senators protested silently during López-Gatell’s virtual appearance by wearing face masks emblazoned with the word “tests.”
Reopening the economy without widespread Covid-19 testing is “irresponsible” and will cause Mexico to “lose control” of the pandemic for a second time, former Health Minister Julio Frenk said last week.
The International Labor Organization (ILO) is also advocating for more testing. It said in a new report that rigorous testing and tracing (TT) of Covid-19 infections “is strongly related to lower labor market disruption … [and] substantially smaller social disruptions than confinement and lockdown measures.”
In countries with strong testing and tracing, the average drop in working hours is reduced by as much as 50%, the ILO said.
“There are three reasons for this: TT reduces reliance on strict confinement measures; promotes the public confidence and so encourages consumption and supports employment; and helps minimize operational disruption at the workplace,” the organization said.
“The estimated average loss of hours for countries with the lowest intensity of testing and tracing is around 14%, compared with 7% for those with the highest intensity. This is an important factor to consider in the design of policy measures aimed at facilitating a safe return to work.”
The ILO also said that “testing and tracing can itself create new jobs, even if temporary, which can be targeted towards youth and other priority groups.”
Telecommunications company Telcel announced Wednesday night that a damaged fiber optic cable caused intermittent service slowdowns and outages in various parts of Mexico during the afternoon.
The company said in a press release that it redirected the traffic through alternate servers, which put increased pressure on the rest of its network.
“Service is gradually returning to normal. Telcel offers an apology for the inconvenience its clients are experiencing because of this,” it said in the statement.
However, many customers reported problems Thursday morning as well, mostly with telephone service.
Customers in several areas of the Mexico City metropolitan area reported poor service and outages throughout the day on Wednesday, as did some in Chihuahua and Nuevo León.
The website Downdetector said millions of users were affected by the outage over the course of seven hours.
Technology experts announced at the beginning of the quarantine period that the increased number of workers switching to a home office would slow but not break the internet in Mexico, but Wednesday’s outage was the fourth such incident this month.
Telcel users had to deal with network failures on May 7, 9 and 20, as well. On those occasions, Telcel’s sister telecommunications company Telmex also had trouble providing its services.
The companies said that the outages were due to damage done to their fiber optic networks by third parties, not server overload.
As of March, Telcel had a total of 77.21 million cellular phone customers, while Temex had 9.79 million home internet clients.
A mob went on the ramapage Wednesday night in Venustiano Carrranza, burning houses and vehicles.
Hundreds of people took to the streets in Venustiano Carranza, Chiapas, Wednesday night after rumors spread on social media that the government was trying to kill them.
Around midnight Wednesday and into the early hours of today, residents went on a rampage provoked by false reports that the municipal government was using drones to spray a deadly chemical at residents who do not believe that the coronavirus exists.
Angry mobs of citizens armed with sticks and stones looted an Elektra department store and burned down the home of Mayor Amando Trujillo Ancheyta, that of his in-laws, as well as the residence of Chiapas Governor Rutilio Escandón’s elderly mother, who escaped the blaze unharmed.
Streets were blocked off and vehicles belonging to medical personnel were looted and burned.
Residents were enraged by social-distancing measures and the municipal government’s crackdown on those who refused to follow sanitary guidelines as confirmed cases of the coronavirus mounted.
The message disseminated on WhatsApp and Facebook said that a community member had shot down a drone and discovered it was carrying a box of white powder, said to be Paraquat, a highly toxic herbicide.
Some residents said that the mayor was using the herbicide to kill them, decried the existence of the coronavirus and believe that a local saint, “El Señor del Pozo,” would protect them from sickness, just as he is believed to have cured a woman of leprosy in the 1690s.
Cancún hopes to assure travelers that it's a safe destination.
As Cancún and the Mexican Caribbean prepare to reopen for tourists after suffering an estimated US $1 billion in lost revenue, the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) has given the destination its safety stamp of approval.
The WTTC has announced that the Mexican Caribbean will be the first destination in the Americas to receive a newly created “Safe Travels” global safety and hygiene certification, backed by the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and more than 200 CEOs in the tourism sector.
The region joins cities in Saudi Arabia, Portugal and Spain that have adopted globally standardized protocols recognized by the WTTC, with the hope that the certification will increase travelers’ confidence in the approved destinations.
The stamp will be offered to hotels, restaurants, airlines, cruise lines, tour operators, restaurants, shops, transportation services and airports that adopt the WTTC’s guidelines.
“We have learned from past crises that global standard protocols and consistency provide confidence for the traveler. Our new global safety stamp is designed to help rebuild consumer confidence worldwide,” the WTTC said in a press release.
“We appreciate being one of the first destinations to receive this certification from [the WTTC],” Quintana Roo Governor Carlos Joaquín González said. “The state authorities and tourism companies have worked as a team to guarantee the trust and safety of tourists.”
Major tourism operators are hopeful that the industry can rebound. “We see the early signs of our industry’s resiliency, but we also believe that restoring consumer confidence is the greatest accelerant to increasing traveler demand,” says TripAdvisor CEO Steve Kaufer, who applauded the WTTC’s initiative. “Safety has always been top a priority for travelers, and the need to feel safe will only become more important in the months and years ahead.”
The WTTC safe travel protocols were developed in collaboration with the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the International Air Transport Association, the Airport Council International and the Cruise Lines International Association.
Covid-19 death projections by MIT for Mexico, the US and Canada. The figures have gone up since the chart was created earlier Thursday.
Mexico’s coronavirus death toll will soar well above 100,000 by September 1, according to a model developed by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) data scientist that predicts fatalities will peak in August.
Developed by Youyang Gu using machine learning techniques in combination with the SEIR epidemiological model, the model is predicting as of Thursday morning that 136,769 people in Mexico will have lost their lives to Covid-19 by September 1.
The figure is more than 15 times the current official death toll.
In a worst case scenario, coronavirus fatalities in Mexico would total 215,212 by September 1, according to the MIT model, while in a best case scenario the death toll would reach 39,775 by that date.
The model predicts that Covid-19 deaths will peak on August 9 and 10 with 2,064 fatalities on both dates.
It also predicts that 19.44 million people – about one in six Mexicans – will have contracted the new coronavirus by September 1. In a worst case scenario, 30.3 million people will have been infected by that date.
The model estimates that 2.16 million people in Mexico have already been infected, a figure more than 27 times higher than the current official tally.
It predicts that new infections will peak between July 18 and 25 with more than 250,000 people projected to contract the coronavirus each day in the weeklong period.
The predictions make for sober reading as Mexico enters the fourth month of its Covid-19 pandemic with more than 8,000 people already having lost their lives to the disease.
The federal Health Ministry reported an additional 463 coronavirus-related fatalities on Wednesday, lifting the death toll to 8,597. The number of deaths reported was the third highest on a single day after 501 on Tuesday and 479 on Friday last week.
However, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell explained that not all the deaths reported at the nightly coronavirus press briefings occurred in the previous 24 hours. He said that the fatalities reported each night are indicative of the number of deaths that were confirmed in the previous 24 hours and consequently reported to the federal Health Ministry by state authorities.
The daily tally of Covid-19 cases and deaths. The latter is not necessarily the number of deaths that occurred each day, but the number confirmed. milenio
Given that test results may not be known until days after a suspected Covid-19 patient dies, a fatality confirmed to have been caused by the disease might not be reported by the federal Health Ministry until well after it occurred.
López-Gatell said that while the highest number of Covid-19 deaths was reported on Tuesday this week, the highest number of fatalities actually occurred on May 15. He said that 261 coronavirus patients died on that date but only 48 of the fatalities were confirmed the same day and consequently reported by the Health Ministry on May 16.
The other 213 deaths were reported on subsequent days, he said. López-Gatell said that the second and third highest number of Covid-19 deaths occurred on May 14 and 18, with 258 and 252 patients, respectively, succumbing to the disease on those dates.
Of the 463 Covid-19 fatalities reported by the Health Ministry on Wednesday night, only 62 occurred in the previous 24 hours, he said.
Given that the Health Ministry has reported more than 261 deaths – the May 15 peak – on 10 separate days, including five on which more than 400 were reported, the number of deaths reported on several other days must have been much lower than the actual number of fatalities that occurred in the previous 24 hours.
During the past two weeks, the number of Covid-19 deaths reported by the Health Ministry on Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays has been significantly lower than in preceding days, seemingly indicating that there is a delay in confirming and/or reporting deaths over the weekend.
In any case, Mexico’s official death toll has risen rapidly over the past month, increasing from 1,434 on April 27 to 8,597 yesterday, a 500% increase.
More than a quarter of the total deaths – 2,313 – occurred in Mexico City, the country’s coronavirus epicenter, but several media reports based on a range of evidence including death certificates issued in the capital claim that fatalities are being drastically underreported by authorities.
López-Gatell has acknowledged that Covid-19 has killed more people than official statistics show but rejects any suggestion that the government is deliberately underreporting deaths.
In addition to the more than 8,500 people confirmed to have lost their lives to Covid-19, 727 fatalities are suspected to have been caused by the disease but have not yet been confirmed, Health Ministry Director of Epidemiology José Luis Alomía told reporters on Wednesday night.
He also reported 3,463 additional confirmed coronavirus cases, the highest single-day increase to Mexico’s case tally since the virus was first detected in Mexico at the end of February. The figure is indicative of the positive test results reported in the preceding 24 hours, Alomía said.
A total of 78,023 people have now tested positive since the beginning of the pandemic. Alomía said that 15,592 cases – one in five of the total – are considered active, an increase of 874 compared to Tuesday.
He also said that there are 33,566 suspected cases of Covid-19 across the country.
Almost 245,000 people have now been tested for coronavirus in Mexico, a figure that equates to about 1,900 tests per one million inhabitants.
Mexico’s testing rate is about 40 times lower than Spain’s, 25 times lower than that of the United States and more than two times lower than the rate in Brazil, according to data published by the German statistics portal Statista.
Technicians conduct Covid tests at a laboratory in Hermosillo.
Panicked citizens in Sonora have responded to reports of increased cases of Covid-19 by flocking to certified private laboratories to be tested.
Laboratories in Hermosillo and other cities in the state reported that the crowds have exhausted their daily testing capacities in recent days.
Worried residents begin to line up in their cars around 7:00 a.m. and wait for laboratory staff to come to their windows and take the necessary samples.
Costs of coronavirus tests at private labs in the state currently range from 3,000 to 8,000 pesos (US $135-$360).
The laboratory overload is a response to recent reports from the federal and state Health Ministries that rates of both confirmed cases and deaths from the disease are on the rise.
The most recent data released by the Sonora Health Ministry reveal that there are 1,809 confirmed cases and 139 people have died from Covid-19 in the state.
Federal Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell announced that the transmission curve in Hermosillo is expected to peak on June 4, meaning the city will see elevated rates of cases and deaths for months afterward.
“My message is this: if we don’t reduce mobility, we’re not going to have a reduction in infections. The technical report the mathematicians shared with us shows that in the case of Hermosillo, the acme of the epidemic curve will occur on June 4 and the epidemic there will propagate until the first week of August,” said López-Gatell.
More than half a million Mexicans are without power after the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) cut their service for not paying their bills.
Across the country, 543,128 customers didn’t pay their electric bills that were due May 12.
Most of those cut off were customers in México state, Mexico City, Jalisco, Michoacán, Puebla and Guerrero.
CFE director Manuel Bartlett had warned that there would be no deferrals or forgiveness of electricity debt incurred during the coronavirus pandemic, pointing out that the CFE still had to meet a payroll for some 90,000 workers as well as other expenses to keep the federal utility up and running.
Power consumers have noted a considerable uptick in their bimonthly bills due to stay-at-home measures enacted late last March, as people remaining in their homes tend to use electrical appliances more.
One CFE customer reported his regular 400-peso (US $18) electric bill jumped to 1,500 pesos (US $67) due to self-isolation measures.
This has caused protests in various parts of the country, where citizens are asking the federal government to suspend power cuts due to non-payment during the health and economic crisis.
In Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán, residents first petitioned the CFE to defer payments in early May and received no response, so they protested outside the electric utility’s office on Wednesday, as citizens did in 10 communities across the state
“At no time have we said that we do not want to pay,” said local activist Moisés Hernández Lozano. “We want them not to cut it off and in some way charge us later or find an alternative but not cut it.”
In Morelia, Michoacán, politicians are lobbying the CFE to allow households and agricultural businesses to defer payments for 12 months, free of interest and surcharges.
“There are sick people, there are people who do not have money to pay, and we are not asking that it not be paid, what we are asking is that the payment be deferred, that there be no reconnection costs or fines and that cuts be avoided,” said federal Deputy Armando Tejeda Cid.
The CFE’s policy is in line with that of the federal government with regard to the payment of taxes. President López Obrador has repeatedly insisted that there would be no deferrals or tax breaks during the coronavirus emergency.
Parents protest outside the Ministry of Health in Mexico City.
Nine parents of children with cancer began a hunger strike outside the offices of the federal Health Ministry in Mexico City on Wednesday to protest the shortages of cancer medications that have threatened their children’s chances for survival for at least two years.
Reports of understaffed and understocked hospitals began to pop up last spring when the effects of federal budget cuts began to set in. Despite several promises from the federal government to solve the problem, parents are still having trouble getting the life-saving cancer drugs their children need.
The parents said they will continue their strike until Health Minister Jorge Alcocer Varela speaks with them and offers a solution to a problem they say goes back two years.
“We still lack the same medications — cyclophosphamide, vincristine, daunorubicin — and in the face of the indolence of the federal government … nine of us parents decided to begin an indefinite hunger strike outside the ministry offices as an act of nonviolent civil disobedience to put pressure on the [government],” said Luis Olvera, a father participating in the protest.
He and other parents said they will hold the federal government responsible for any physical damages they may incur during their hunger strike.
“We don’t want to come out here. We know that we’re putting ourselves at risk, but we have to do it because they’re always shrugging us off. They promise us that there won’t be a shortage, and the situation in the hospitals doesn’t change. [They] don’t even answer our calls,” said Olvera.
The Health Ministry announced on Monday that a plane carrying cancer medications arrived from Argentina, but the protesting parents said that they have yet to be distributed. The medicines must first be inspected by the federal health regulatory agency before that can happen.
A group of seamstresses in Tabasco has warned President López Obrador that “blood will flow” if the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) cuts their power again for failing to pay their bill.
In a video posted to social media, the head of the Exótica Textiles cooperative in Macuspana – the municipality where López Obrador was born and raised – said that CFE personnel most recently cut the power in their factory while they were rushing to complete an order of face masks to help stop the spread of Covid-19.
Alicia Jiménez said the seamstresses held the president personally responsible for the power cut.
She said that the cooperative is part of the “civil resistance” movement against the state-owned electricity company, which was initiated by López Obrador after his defeat in the 1994 election for governor of Tabasco, allegedly due to electoral fraud.
Jiménez said the president had promised to meet with them to discuss the issue of electricity rates but asked them to be patient. A year and a half after he took office, López Obrador has failed to keep his word, she said.
Advierten a AMLO: si nos cortan la luz habrá sangre
A spokeswoman for the seamstresses gave a fiery speech before the camera in video for President López Obrador.
“He doesn’t want to help us,” Jiménez said.
She also said that the seamstresses haven’t received any support from state or federal authorities to help them through the coronavirus-induced economic slump.
“We do what we can to get by; we have a contract to make face masks but … the [electricity] commission says, ‘go and cut off their power.’ It’s not fair, if we don’t have anything to eat, why do they take away the little we have,” Jiménez said.
“Don’t forget this message [López Obrador], you’re responsible for what happens. … Maybe a lot of people want to see this factory destroyed but … we’re not going to allow it. … If these people come back to disconnect the electricity, a tragedy could happen, we don’t know. … We’re not going to allow them to cut the power.”
At the conclusion of the video, one of the other seamstresses said that the cooperative is the “sustenance of our families” and they won’t allow it to be destroyed by the authorities.
