Governor Corral blames lack of compliance with preventative measures.
Chihuahua’s state health council announced Thursday that the state will return this weekend to the highest risk level on the national coronavirus stoplight system, the first state to do so.
Chihuahua state, whose lawmakers this week called upon the Foreign Affairs Ministry to do a better job of enforcing the land border closure between the U.S. and Mexico in order to prevent an epidemic in the state’s border cities, will return to the maximum risk red level.
Governor Javier Corral Jurado blamed family gatherings and poor compliance on public transit systems for a sharp increase in new coronavirus cases.
“Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have not had weeks as complicated as the ones we are going through now,” he said. “The last 15 days have been the darkest days of the pandemic in Chihuahua.”
In the last 24 hours, the state has seen 708 new cases reported, mainly in Ciudad Juárez — where two hospitals are reportedly full — as well as in Ciudad Chihuahua and Delicias.
Among the various measures being considered as part of the state’s return to the red level are instituting a weekend ban on alcohol sales. Corral said that authorities would be stepping up health and safety protocol enforcement to limit Covid spread, using police and health inspectors, who would be checking businesses to make sure that they are in compliance.
Starting this weekend, authorities will also be conducting inspections and raids on neighborhoods across the state with the most reported cases in order to put a stop to gatherings in homes, which have been pinpointed by health officials as a major cause of the virus’s spread statewide, due to guests not observing social distancing measures.
In addition, the state will increase vigilance on public transit to make sure that both operators and users are following mandated health and safety protocols.
Álvarez-Buylla of Conacyt presents data about the trusts at the president's press conference.
Academics have once again delivered a scathing rebuke of the federal government after the Senate approved its plan to abolish 109 public trusts, many of which fund scientific research.
Despite significant opposition from the Mexican and international academic community, non-governmental organizations and others, a majority of senators voted in favor of abolishing the trusts at a session that ran into the early hours of Wednesday morning.
As a result, their funds – the 109 trusts were allocated some 68 billion pesos (US $3.2 billion) this year alone – will be handed over to the federal Interior Ministry.
Ninety-one of the trusts finance activities related to science and technology while the others fund activities including cultural projects, disaster response, the defense of human rights, the protection of journalists, agricultural development, scholarships for students and attending to victims of crime.
President López Obrador and other government officials claim that trust funds have been misused and that maintaining them would create more opportunities for corruption. However, the government has provided scant evidence to back up its claims and formal complaints haven’t been filed against any of the trusts.
‘The government has flagrantly lied to the Mexican people:’ Alma Maldonado.
María Elena Álvarez-Buylla, director of the National Council of Science and Technology (Conacyt), told President López Obrador’s press conference Wednesday that 41 billion pesos in trust funds was used “discretionally and opaquely” between 2013 and 2018.
She questioned the use of just under 15.5 billion pesos held in Conacyt trusts and 26.1 billion pesos held in trusts to fund the government’s Innovation Stimulation Program. Álvarez-Buylla said the funds went to private companies rather than scientists and researchers working at public institutions.
Alma Maldonado, an education researcher at the National Polytechnic Institute and member of ProCiencia, an academic network opposed to the abolition of the trusts, said the government still hasn’t presented sufficient evidence to justify taking over the funds.
She said there was nothing more anti-scientific than taking a decision before carrying out an investigation and presenting the evidence the investigation uncovers.
Maldonado claimed that the government has deceived the public, is guilty of slandering those who manage the trusts by claiming that the use of their funds has been corrupt and “flagrantly” lied to the Mexican people.
“In a lot of the data that María Elena Álvarez-Buylla presented she confuses trust money with Innovation Stimulation Program money. And she does it on purpose, it’s about confusing people,” she said.
Sergio López Ayllón, director of the Center for Research in Teaching and Economics (CIDE), a Mexico City university whose trusts will be abolished, said that Álvarez-Buylla was drawing a long bow in claiming that there was corruption in the use of public trust funds during the previous government.
Her remarks on Wednesday were “very unfortunate,” he said, adding that the government is trying to show a “dark side” to the trusts that simply doesn’t exist.
José Antonio Aguilar, a researcher and professor at CIDE, said that the Conacyt chief’s remarks at Wednesday’s press conference were nothing more than “propaganda.”
“She gave decontextualized and deceitful information; projects that Conacyt had with private companies were presented as acts of corruption without showing the mission they had. None of this information was placed in context in order to understand if there was something improper. It was an exercise of propaganda, disinformation and slander, which is what the president has specialized in lately,” he said.
Brenda Valderrama, a biotechnology researcher at the National Autonomous University and president of the Morelos Academy of Sciences, said the abolition of the trusts will return Conacyt to the position it was in 35 years ago.
However, the trusts’ disappearance won’t mean a “backward step” for science in Mexico but rather the “dismantling” of the entire apparatus that supports it, she said.
One of many protests against the government plan. ‘To interrupt the continuity of science is to paralyze the advance of the country.’
“The scientific apparatus will die from starvation, … the funding system is exterminated. Even supposing they [the government] want to inject money [into scientific research] there’s no longer anywhere to inject it because there’s no longer anyone to receive it or manage it. There’s not just a rupture in the way in which science is funded, there is a void,” Valderrama said.
“We had a path that guaranteed the quality of research but … now we’re entering unknown territory,” said López Ayllón, the CIDE director. “We don’t know what we’ll do in the future.”
Aguilar, López’s CIDE colleague, said the move is part of a “long attack” by the current government on “science, the arts and culture.”
“What happened in the Senate and the Chamber [of Deputies] is a milestone [in the attack], a cultural defeat, a petty victory,” he said.
The academic predicted that the government will lose significant support over its decision and that those affected will continue to protest.
“On October 2, 1968, the government confronted the student movement and thought that it crushed protest [with the massacre at Tlatelolco, Mexico City]. Something similar … is happening now. The symbolic impact it will have will be enormous. Like October 2 [the abolition of the trusts] will mark a before and after. It will symbolize the brutal divorce of a government with its victims,” Aguilar said.
As the global bubble tea market grows, Asian tea maker Gong Cha has announced it is expanding in Mexico with plans to open 100 stores by 2024.
Mexico general manager Cristina Soto told the newspaper Milenio that this year the company will open six more stores selling the popular green tea and tapioca pearl drink, with 20 more coming in 2021.
“The pandemic did not affect us, in fact we had increased sales…” she said. Some of the new outlets will be owned by the company, others are franchises. “If we can open more, we will.”
Gong Cha, which means “tea for an emperor,” was born in the Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung in 2006 and quickly began expanding its presence. Currently, it has 1,500 stores in countries such as Taiwan, South Korea, China, Malaysia and the Philippines.
Gong Cha opened its first Mexican store in Guadalajara in February 2019, marking the chain’s first entry into a Spanish-speaking country. Two more stores were added, a second in Guadalajara and a store in the Condesa neighborhood of Mexico City.
“It is a market that is growing, unlike coffee mainly because Generation Z is looking for different options. We want to enter Manzanillo and Puerto Vallarta, and we are interested in opening talks to reach Puebla, Monterrey and Querétaro,” Soto said.
The global bubble tea market is valued at US $2.4 billion, but is estimated to reach $4.3 billion by 2027.
A young male Papantla flyer was gravely injured Wednesday in Hidalgo when he fell during a performance.
The acrobat, identified as Antelmo Gómez Hernández, 25, was injured while performing with a Papantla flyers troupe at the Toxtla Festival in Acaxochitlán. He was rushed to the Tulancingo General Hospital, where he was diagnosed with arm, leg, hip, and spinal fractures and remained in serious condition, according to local media.
The young man belonged to a group of seven Papantla flyers from Pahuantlán, Puebla. They were representing their small community of Xolotla.
Papantla flyers are traditional acrobats from all over Mexico and Central America who engage in acrobatic feats while circulating a tall pole, hanging by a rope tied to their feet. Performers often range from teenagers to middle-aged men. The spectacle is meant to resemble birds flying through the air.
The acrobats perform in small groups, starting at heights of up to 40 meters and slowly spinning around the pole, performing feats in a gradual process to the ground. The spectacle is on UNESCO’s protected cultural rituals list, the List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
This cancer hospital in Ecatepec was abandoned five years ago after the state spent 800 million pesos on it.
México state resident Houdini González lost both his mother and his brother in September to illnesses he firmly believes they could have survived had they gotten hospital care in time.
“They became ill, and we were looking for a place where we could take them, but we didn’t find one. When we finally did find help, it was too late,” he said in an interview with the newspaper Milenio.
Ironically, the González family, who lives in the city of Chicoloapan, lives 10 minutes away from an unfinished hospital construction site that has been sitting idle for the last seven years. Adding insult to injury, the site is an eyesore, with years of accumulated dust, and has been stripped over time of the wiring the plumbing in its walls by thieves looking to sell the copper for salvage.
The hospital’s situation is not unique. It is one of 10 hospitals across the state that were started years ago by previous state administrations and never finished. According to Edgar Samuel Ríos, once a Chicoloapan mayoral candidate, the projects represented millions of pesos in investment.
Ríos says the projects have been handed off from administration to administration, with no one finishing them or complying with federal requirements that would give the state money to complete the buildings.
State lawmaker Karina Labastida recently told Milenio that 981 million pesos would be required to finish the abandoned hospitals.
Chicoloapan’s hospital was supposed to offer internal medicine, OB/GYN, pediatric, and psychological services, plus X-ray equipment and laboratories and 18 hospital beds. Meanwhile, the city of Tlalnepantla was supposed to get a hospital in the Caracoles neighborhood, one of the state’s most populous, but today, as in Chicoloapan, the promised hospital is an unfinished shell, with no assurances from anyone about when or if it will be completed.
“It means insufficient healthcare for the people who live in the community,” said Sergio Martínez Solís, a Caracoles resident.
In the city of Ecatepec, residents were supposed to get a cancer hospital. After officials spent 800 million pesos on the project, it has sat unfinished for five years.
A petition with 60,000 México state residents’ signatures has made its way to Governor Alfredo de Mazo, demanding that the government finish the hospitals, but as yet the government has made no commitments. In Chicoloapan, all that residents have managed to accomplish is to clean up the trash and debris on the site themselves.
For Houdini González, the issue goes beyond his own family’s tragedies. Healthcare is a civil right, he said.
“Everyone has the right to health,” he said. “With human beings, you don’t gamble.”
The percentage of intubated patients who die is much higher in Mexico than the US.
Almost nine in 10 coronavirus patients placed on ventilators at Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) hospitals have died, according to information obtained through a freedom of information request.
IMSS told the newspaper El Universal that 17,331 coronavirus patients had been intubated at its healthcare facilities up until the beginning of October. Of that number, 15,070 – or 86.9% – had died.
IMSS hospitals in Mexico City have recorded the highest number of deaths among intubated patients, with 2,810. The next highest number occurred in México state with 1,979; Veracruz with 964; Baja California with 849; and Jalisco with 621.
Deaths of intubated patients in those five states account for 48% of all fatalities among people placed on ventilators at hospitals run by IMSS, Mexico’s largest public healthcare provider.
Death rates among coronavirus patients intubated at hospitals in some parts of the United States were comparable to the IMSS rate early in the pandemic but have since decreased as doctors have learned more about Covid-19 and how to treat it. A study published in May by a group of doctors at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, found that 35.7% of Covid-19 patients who required ventilators died.
Experts who spoke with El Universal say there are two main reasons why so many intubated patients are dying in Mexico.
One is the lack of medical personnel in intensive care wards and the other is that many patients are already seriously ill when they seek care at hospitals.
Alejandro Macías, an infectious disease doctor and member of the coronavirus commission at the National Autonomous University (UNAM), praised the federal government for quickly purchasing additional ventilators but pointed out that they are of little use if there aren’t sufficient health workers to monitor intubated patients.
“During the pandemic, intensive care beds were placed in extension areas of hospitals and that in itself can be a problem. It’s not a secret that Mexico has a lack of [critical care] specialists,” he said.
Gregorio Benítez, a medicine professor at UNAM, said that knowing how to use a ventilator goes beyond knowing how to intubate a patient. Therefore, the lives of intubated patients can be placed at risk if they are monitored by doctors who don’t have the training and experience required to operate them effectively.
“Ventilators are not medical equipment that just anyone knows how to use,” Benítez said.
Macías: patients need to go to the hospital sooner rather than later.
“Even when the people in charge of intensive care have skill in intubating, [mechanical ventilation] doesn’t stop being risky because in the end [a ventilator] is an object that is foreign to the body. … It’s not just intubation [that doctors need to know how to do], it’s how to program the ventilator, how to adjust the … quantity of oxygen … and how to monitor the time between breaths, for example.”
Laurie Ann Ximénez-Fyvie, head of the Molecular Genetics Laboratory at UNAM, noted that many people sick with the coronavirus have waited until their symptoms are extremely serious before going to hospital. As a result, even intubation is unable to save many of them.
“A problem that the health system in Mexico has faced during the Covid-19 pandemic is that patients who require mechanical ventilation are arriving at hospital [in a] very serious [condition] with very low oxygen levels and when the probability of getting better is minimal,” Ximénez-Fyvie said.
“That [problem] is added to the lack of health personnel who are trained to attend to critical care beds.”
Macías said that as important as ventilators are, they are only one tool in the fight against the coronavirus.
“It’s not a matter of there being ventilators and magically everything is solved,” he said, adding that to give themselves a better chance of survival coronavirus patients need to go to hospital sooner rather than later.
“Unfortunately the majority of patients [who died] sought care very late. There are sick people without symptoms but with low oxygen levels. They don’t know that because they don’t have an oximeter and they don’t seek help until they feel really bad. That’s why every family should have an oximeter and check their [oxygen] levels frequently,” Macías said.
As a result, people will seek medical care sooner and there will be fewer Covid-19 deaths, he said.
The number of intubated patients who have died at IMSS hospitals accounts for about one-sixth of all officially-recorded Covid-19 fatalities in Mexico.
The official death toll currently stands at 87,415 after the Health Ministry registered 522 additional fatalities on Wednesday.
Mexico’s accumulated case tally rose to 867,559 with 6,845 new cases reported, the highest one-day increase since August 13 when 7,371 cases were registered.
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell, Mexico’s coronavirus point man, said this week that there are “early signs” of a new wave of infections, noting that new case numbers, the positivity rate (the percentage of Covid-19 tests that come back positive) and the number of hospitalized coronavirus patients have all recently risen.
Amazon's fulfillment center in Tepotzotlán, México state.
Amazon announced a US $100-million expansion of its operations in Mexico that includes the opening of new fulfillment centers in Apodaca, Nuevo León, and Tlajomulco, Jalisco, the first ones located outside the Mexico City area.
The company will also open a support building in the state of México as well as 12 new delivery stations throughout the country.
In total, the new buildings represent 69,000 square meters of construction, equivalent to a space larger than the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City.
The company said the expansion represents the creation of more than 1,500 direct and indirect jobs across Mexico. “The opening of these new buildings represents an opportunity to forge a career in Amazon México from day 1, having a wide variety of jobs and positions available with competitive salaries in the industry and comprehensive benefits, with the possibility of developing and achieving long-term growth,” the company said.
This will bring Amazon’s presence in Mexico to a total of five fulfillment centers, two support buildings, two sorting centers and 27 delivery stations. The company first began operations in Mexico in 2015 and inaugurated its third fulfillment center in Tepotzotlán, México state, in 2019.
Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro Ramírez said Amazon’s presence in the state will help small and medium-sized businesses adapt to new market demands and market their products through electronic channels faster and at a lower cost.
The Foreign Affairs Ministry's Velasco explains the new water deal.
The federal government announced Thursday that it had reached an agreement with the United States to settle Mexico’s water debt to its northern neighbor.
Mexico and the United States have to send water to each other under the terms of a 1944 bilateral treaty but Mexico ended the previous five-year cycle of the treaty with a debt, and the current five-year cycle will end on Saturday.
As of late September, Mexico still had to send 289 million cubic meters of water to the United States, according to National Water Commission (Conagua) director Blanca Jiménez.
Roberto Velasco, head of the Foreign Ministry’s North America department, told President López Obrador’s morning press conference that Mexico will use water in dams on the Mexico-United States border to comply with its obligations under the treaty.
The government has been trying to divert water to the United States from dams in the state of Chihuahua but has faced ardent opposition from local farmers.
López Obrador said authorities in the United States understood the difficulties the government has faced and as a result allowed the diversion of water from the international dams, which isn’t usually permitted under the terms of the treaty.
“A very important agreement related to the water treaty we have with the United States was signed yesterday,” he said.
“I want to take the opportunity to thank the United States government for its understanding and solidarity; thanks to President Donald Trump and Secretary of State [Mike] Pompeo.”
López Obrador also said the United States made a commitment to provide drinking water to Mexico if it is required and that it would send additional water south of the border in the case of severe drought.
However, the Conagua chief said there is a plan to ensure ongoing water supply for 13 border cities despite the diversion of water from international dams.
Jiménez said that two international dams in Chihuahua and Coahuila will continue to supply water to border cities and that water will also be sourced from dams in Nuevo León and Tamaulipas.
Velasco said the agreement with the United States allows Mexico to settle its water debts using international dams and guarantees the supply of water for urban centers in the north of the country.
A happy wedding party in Mexicali where 100 guests were infected.
Two weddings, one in Mexicali, Baja California, and the other in Torreón, Coahuila, have proven to be superspreader events.
More than one-third of all guests tested positive for the coronavirus after attending an actor’s wedding in Mexicali, reported the Baja California Ministry of Health.
Health Minister Alonso Pérez Rico, said the celebration was held on October 3. Several days later attendees underwent coronavirus testing, with more than 100 coming back positive.
The wedding between soap opera actor Armando Torrea and Laura Pérez, daughter of a local businessman, took place in an events facility in the exclusive area of San Pedro Residencial. Some 300 guests attended, including celebrities and local businesspeople.
Pérez said none of the preventive measures to avoid infection were respected. There was no use of face masks, temperatures were not checked and social distancing was ignored.
A video of the celebration shows musicians playing and people dancing on a crowded dance floor.
Senior citizens are among the infected, Pérez said, but so far there have been no cases requiring hospitalization.
The party hall will be investigated by the State Commission for the Protection of Sanitary Risks for violating Mexicali restrictions, as groups of more than 50 are prohibited en Baja California.
In Torreón, 90 of the 700 guests who attended an October 10 wedding in the exclusive Las Villas neighborhood have tested positive for the coronavirus.
Like Baja California, events with over 50 guests are not permitted.
The Laguna region where Torreón is located is seeing an increase in Covid-19 infections, as all private hospitals are saturated. According to the state government, as of Wednesday there were 500 people hospitalized in the state, of which 210 were in Torreón, 100 more than a month ago.
Health officials have again asked residents to avoid social gatherings.
Dr. Alberto Salas, of the group Doctors to the Front, expressed his concern about “excessive” social conviviality and asked the authorities to listen to scientists and wield a “firm hand” with the community.
“If in the next two weeks we do not stop all the social events — weddings, parties, gatherings — we will have serious problems,” he said.
Baja California has recorded 22,040 cases of the coronavirus and 3,733 people have died. In Coahuila, 30,772 cases have been registered, and 2,153 deaths.
Iberdrola president Sánchez said future plans will depend on the government's response.
The Spanish energy company Iberdrola has threatened to stop investing in Mexico if the federal government doesn’t provide clarity about the policies that will apply to foreign companies.
CEO Ignacio Sánchez Galán said Wednesday that Mexican authorities must make it clear whether they are open to foreign and private investment or not.
Speaking during a presentation of Iberdrola’s latest financial results, Sánchez said the firm’s future plans will depend on the government’s response.
“If it says that it doesn’t want foreign investors to invest, we won’t,” he said, adding that the company will continue to invest in Mexico if the government indicates that it will welcome foreign capital.
Sánchez noted that Iberdrola’s investments in Mexico are small in comparison with those in other countries. However, it announced last year that it would invest US $5 billion in Mexico between 2019 and 2024, resources that now appear at risk.
President López Obrador did nothing on Thursday morning to allay the company’s concerns. He said he understood that “the company disagrees with the new policy to rescue the Federal Electricity Commission and Pemex.” But the government will not yield, he said, because “we have to defend the public interest.”
Problems between the energy company, a huge producer of wind power, and the federal government began last year when the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) announced that it would review the terms of natural gas contracts with private firms, including Iberdrola.
Tuxpan Mayor Juan Antonio Aguilar Mancha said earlier this month that it was disappointing that the project wasn’t going ahead because it would have created a large number of jobs and generated a significant economic spillover in the area.
López Obrador says that he does welcome foreign investment but he is also committed to strengthening the CFE and Pemex, the state oil company.
Some policies enacted by his government have made it harder for foreign and private companies to enter into and operate in the energy industry, triggering criticism from business and some foreign government officials including United States ambassador to Mexico Christopher Landau.
The government has shown particular hostility to renewable energy companies, publishing a new policy in May that could effectively prevent the sector’s expansion in Mexico.
The attempts to clamp down on private investment in the energy sector are ongoing.
The Financial Times reported last week that it had seen documents that showed that the energy regulator CRE is implementing an appeal issued by López Obrador to regulators last month to ban new energy permits. The ban would cover everything from renewables generation to gas stations, the Times said.
The government’s rule changing energy policies have triggered a flood of injunction requests from both energy companies and environmental groups, some of which have been granted.
In addition, the Supreme Court suspended the Energy Ministry’s new energy policy in June, ruling that it violated the constitutionally enshrined principles of free competition because it placed a range of restrictions on the renewable sector including limits on the number of permits that can be issued for new wind and solar projects.
At a session on Wednesday, justices of the Supreme Court’s first chamber unanimously upheld the decision handed down by Justice Luis María Aguilar Morales in June, ruling that a challenge presented by the president’s office that sought to overturn the suspension was groundless.
The president said Thursday that a constitutional amendment was under consideration as a result, so as to protect the public interest in the development of natural resources.
