The San Miguel de Allende municipal council approved the placement of health checkpoints at the entrances of the historic, central highlands city in Guanajuato.
As of June 1, the checkpoints will be activated “as a preventative measure to return the city of San Miguel de Allende to normality, in the face of the coronavirus contingency,” said the council in a statement.
The checkpoints will be placed at the bus station as well as the four highways leading into town and manned by the National Guard, the municipal police, Civil Protection and the Ministry of Health.
All vehicles entering San Miguel will be stopped and passengers and drivers will have their temperatures checked and be provided with hand sanitizer. They will be asked the purpose of their visit and their names, places of origin, ages and phone numbers will be recorded and registered with health officials.
On Wednesday night, the council also approved guidelines for a four-phase, staggered reopening of the economy.
In the first phase, most retail stores will be allowed to reopen, including restaurants and beauty salons.
The next phase will see public parks, theaters, libraries, cultural centers, churches and churches follow suit.
During phase three, sports centers such as gyms and community athletic fields will begin operating again.
And in phase four, bars, nightclubs, museums, spas, tourist activities and private vacation home rentals, such as Airbnb, will be allowed to reopen.
Guanajuato currently has a “green light” on the federal government’s stoplight rating system, meaning federal restrictions may be lifted as of June 1. The state has 897 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and had recorded 84 deaths as of Thursday.
There have been 14 confirmed cases in San Miguel and no deaths reported.
Salvador Esteban checks his coffee plants in Pluma Hidalgo.
As the coronavirus pandemic has shut down both the tourism and restaurant sectors in Mexico and abroad, coffee producers in Oaxaca’s Sierra Sur region are worried about the future of an industry they say has been forgotten by the federal government.
“All of this affects the commodity chain,” said Rosario Esteban Figueroa, a coffee grower and cafe owner from the region’s premier coffee-growing community, Pluma Hidalgo.
“As producers and small business owners we create jobs, generate economy, promote our community as a tourist destination [and] bring the earnings of this dispersed local economy into the community,” she said.
But those revenues are currently under threat. The lack of coffee shops brewing up lattes, espressos and cappuccinos nearly the world over has affected sales drastically.
“There are small producers here in Pluma who haven’t sold a kilo of coffee in over three months,” said Damián Ramírez, whose family runs a small plantation just outside of town.
Coffee plants await planting out.
He and other growers have had to lay off workers and reduce production during the quarantine period.
“We small producers are suffering,” he said.
And data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) back up that claim. Its annual report on the Mexican coffee industry, published on Tuesday, states that “Covid-19 effects are expected to stunt consumption growth, as restaurants and cafes around the country are closed, stymying government and specialty producer efforts to increase consumption of high-value Mexican coffee.”
But the wholesale market isn’t the only part of this local economy affected by the pandemic. Tourism is also an important source of income for many communities in the Sierra Sur, including Pluma Hidalgo.
Long known as the place that supplies coffee shops in Oaxaca City with its characteristically acidic beans perfect for strong, dark roasts, the town has worked hard to promote tourism to its misty peaks in recent years. And more and more tourists had been making the pilgrimage to sample the black gold of Pluma at its source before the pandemic erupted.
Esteban owns cafes in both her native Pluma Hidalgo and nearby San José del Pacífico, normally popular year-round with tourists seeking mystical experiences via the magic mushrooms that grow there.
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These days that usually consistent flow of visitors isn’t even a trickle. She closed the cafe in San José and has seen some pretty lonely days in her flagship store back home.
“There is no tourist presence in the area, which depends greatly on tourism,” she said.
Ramírez, who runs a cafe right next to Esteban’s in Pluma Hidalgo’s main square, agreed with her that the lack of tourists has gravely affected the incomes of small coffee producers in the region.
What they and other growers say they need is government support, but that’s something that has been in short supply since before the economy was shut down.
Growers in Pluma Hidalgo receive an annual stipend of 5,000 pesos (US $220) from the federal government as part of President López Obrador’s social welfare-heavy 2020 budget. Both told Mexico News Daily that it is nowhere near enough.
And the USDA report backs up that claim, noting that “a lack of impactful government investment in the sector is a severe impediment to consistent growth in the years to come.”
As the 2020 flowering season begins amid a glut of uncertainty, Esteban, Ramírez and other small producers from the Sierra Sur hope the federal government won’t leave them high and dry.
“We’re hoping the government will support the [coffee] sector, … because it’s going to be a very, very slow reactivation of our economy,” Esteban said.
Testing is fundamental, says Julio Frenk, now president of the University of Miami.
Reopening the economy without widespread Covid-19 testing is “irresponsible” and will cause Mexico to “lose control” of the pandemic for a second time, says a former federal health minister.
In an interview with the newspaper El Universal, Julio Frenk Mora, health minister in the 2000-2006 government led by former president Vicente Fox, said that testing is essential in order to prevent a large second wave of coronavirus infections.
“So that people can leave their homes, testing is fundamental because if we don’t test, we’ll lose control of [the pandemic] again and we’ll have to ask everyone to stay at home again and that will be disastrous,” he said.
“It’s irresponsible to say that the economy can be opened without testing; what they [the federal government] are almost guaranteeing is that we’ll have to close it again,” Frenk added.
Just under 202,000 people have been tested for coronavirus in Mexico, according to data presented by the Health Ministry on Thursday night, a figure that equates to about 1,600 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 14 times lower than the rate in Chile.
Despite the growing pandemic (Mexico had recorded almost 60,000 Covid-19 cases and 6,510 deaths as of Thursday) and the low testing rate, the federal government is forging ahead with plans to begin reopening the economy on a state by state basis starting June 1.
Asked whether Mexico is ready to start taking steps toward the “new normal” at the start of next month, Frenk responded:
“The country is very heterogeneous, there has not been one sole pandemic but rather many epidemics in different parts of the country. … There are parts of the country that might be ready to open but in general, [Mexico is] definitely not. … Even in places that are ready [to reopen] because the number of cases has gone down, testing is fundamental.”
The former health minister, a medical doctor and public health academic who is currently president of the University of Miami, said the federal government’s “unwillingness” to test more widely – only people with serious Covid-19 symptoms have been tested to date – is “inexplicable” and has prevented it from fully understanding the size of the pandemic.
“If we don’t know the magnitude of the problem, thinking of an optimal solution is difficult,” he said.
“I don’t know if we know something in Mexico that is unknown in the rest of the world because all other countries have insisted that the key to understanding and controlling the pandemic and reopening the economy in a safe way is to do more tests. Mexico is the only country that’s not doing it,” Frenk said.
Active Covid-19 cases in Mexico as of Thursday evening.
He also said that “it’s a mistake to suggest that we’ve already passed the worst” of the pandemic. “The truth is that we don’t really know when [the peak] will arrive.”
Frenk charged that the government failed to respond in a timely manner to the pandemic even though the national social distancing initiative commenced when Mexico had recorded just 316 coronavirus cases and two deaths and a health emergency declaration that suspended all nonessential activities was issued on March 30 when the country had just over 1,000 cases and 29 people had lost their lives to Covid-19.
“An early window [of opportunity] was unfortunately lost,” he said.
“All the countries that have done well [in controlling the pandemic] reacted on time and those that haven’t done well trivialized and played down the emergency. One characteristic shared by many of the latter is that they have populist governments: Russia, Turkey, Italy, the United States, Brazil and Mexico. A trait of populism is to undervalue the opinion of experts,” Frenk said.
“This virus is very difficult to control because it’s very contagious and people without symptoms, or mild symptoms, can transmit the disease and cause it to grow exponentially. In countries that have done well, they tested quickly.”
Frenk rejected President López Obrador’s claim in late April that coronavirus had been “controlled” in Mexico and his assertion that the government’s management of the crisis has been a “success.”
Even though official statistics “undoubtedly” underestimate the size of the pandemic, they show that it is growing “exponentially,” Frenk said.
“The health emergency hasn’t ended; I think that saying that the [management of the pandemic] is a ‘success’ is premature.”
Ejutla, Oaxaca, where coronavirus restrictions have been lifted.
The outlook is not so hopeful for at least two dozen municipalities that initially made the list of the coronavirus-free “municipalities of hope.”
They have dropped off the list due to new infections since they were given the green light to reopen and lift coronavirus restrictions on Monday.
Originally the government had identified 324 communities that could begin reopening, although only 54 actually did lift restrictions. Governors in five states — Jalisco, Guerrero, Chihuahua and Oaxaca — said they would not begin to reopen until at least June 1.
And in states like Puebla and San Luis Potosí, the outlook is not quite as optimistic as it was at the beginning of the week as far as returning to the “new normal.”
Puebla Governor Miguel Barbosa said that of his state’s 13 municipalities of hope, only eight remained due to confirmed cases of the virus or proximity to other municipalities with infection.
The situation is similar in San Luis Potosí, which on May 13 had six qualifying municipalities and now there are none.
By May 17, a day before the scheduled reopening, five of the six communities had seen outbreaks of the coronavirus, and the remaining municipality borders on a community with confirmed cases and is thus not eligible to reopen under the federal government’s criteria.
In addition, Moctezuma, Sonora, now has two reported cases and one death, as does Tezonapa, Veracruz.
And despite the fact that these two states did not reopen, the virus has reached them.
Cañadas de Obregón in Jalisco now has its first five cases of the coronavirus, and in Oaxaca 11 municipalities previously deemed virus-free have now seen cases.
The Spanish newspaper El País reported Wednesday that no virus tests had been carried out in 67% of the municipalities of hope.
Infection diseases specialist Alejandro Macías told the newspaper that it was only a matter of time before those municipalities began reporting Covid-19 cases, and stressed the importance of testing to determine the magnitude of infection.
It’s a navigational instrument that countries can use to determine if activity can be resumed, he said.
While humans deal with outbreaks of the coronavirus, rabbits and hares in northwestern Mexico and the southwestern United States are suffering from a viral threat of their own.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (Sader) reports that so far rabbits and hares both domestic and wild have been diagnosed with a type of hemorrhagic fever in the states of Baja California, Baja California Sur, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango and Sonora.
The federal agriculture sanitation authority Senasica first confirmed cases of the rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus 2 in rabbits in Chihuahua in April. Since then it has detected 36 cases among domestic rabbits and 11 in wild hares, the latter being found in the states of Chihuahua, Durango and Sonora.
Health authorities ordered immediate action to deal with the problem, including culling infected populations and sanitizing areas where sick animals have been.
Labs operated by Senasica have tested 147 domestic rabbits and 22 wild hares, and veterinarians have tended to 52 potential cases reported from 12 states.
The virus is not native to Mexico, and experts from both sides of the border agree that it is highly contagious and lethal for rabbits and hares, but cannot be transmitted to humans or other animals.
To mitigate the spread of the virus, health authorities are advising cuniculturists, or rabbit breeders, not to transport sick or dead rabbits. Restricting nonessential persons or other animals from accessing breeding pens and avoiding buying rabbits of unknown origin will also reduce the spread of the disease.
Filmmakers, from left, Cuarón, Iñárritu and del Toro argued successfully against elimination of fund.
Mexican film industry leaders have persuaded the federal government not to touch a stimulus fund that supports film projects.
Three award-winning directors and other prominent figures in the industry held a virtual meeting Thursday with the Chamber of Deputies culture and cinema commission to protest a plan to eliminate Fidecine, the Cinema Investment and Stimulus Fund.
Members of the Chamber of Deputies had earlier this week proposed the elimination of the fund under coronavirus belt-tightening measures, but the assembled actors and directors were able to convince deputies otherwise through impassioned arguments about the importance of film as an industry and its essential place in Mexican culture.
“If the government is allowed to do this, it’s truly a devastation within a structure of an already very fragile ecosystem. It’s like a deforestation,” Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro told Screen Daily in response to the proposed cut. He noted that support was necessary not just to foster artistic voices but to offer diversity at a time when Hollywood exports continued to dominate local box office.
“This economic crutch allowed first-time filmmakers to make movies – without it there would have been no new generation when I was coming up in the late 80s and early 90s.”
Del Toro was joined by multiple Oscar-winning directors Alejandro González Iñárritu and Alfonso Cuarón, who told the commission in a statement that the Mexican film industry “is a memory, window and mirror of our nation.”
After hearing their arguments, Deputy Mario Delgado announced that the funding would remain in place, and the government would continue to help support and grow Mexico’s film industry.
Fidecine was created in 1988 and has grown over the years to fund some 20% of Mexican films since 2002. The trust is valued at 223 million pesos or US $9.78 million.
Fidecine is one of 44 trusts, or fideicomisos, that lawmakers have proposed eliminating. Jointly they hold 91 billions pesos in funding (US $4 billion) for a range of initiatives, from filmmaking and scientific research to rural development and the protection of human rights.
President López Obrador proposed the trusts’ elimination in April, saying the money should be allocated to reactivating the post-coronavirus economy.
The Pemex refinery in Tula is one of the worst. It is located 90 kilometers from Mexico City.
Five of Mexico’s six Pemex oil refineries are among the 25 top polluters in the world for sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions, monitoring by NASA satellites in 2018 shows.
Globally, the three top SO2 polluting refineries are located in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Singapore, respectively, but the Mexican refineries in Tula, Hidalgo, and Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, are ranked in fourth and fifth place.
Rounding out the top 25 are the refineries in Cadereyta, Nuevo León, in 18th place; Salamanca, Guanajuato, in 19th place; and Ciudad Madero, Tamaulipas, 23rd.
Alejandro Villalobos Hiriart, an oil refining specialist and consultant, said that Mexican plants lack filtering systems called “scrubbers” which capture SO2 emissions. Other experts say that Mexico’s hydrodesulfurization plants, which use a chemical process to remove sulfur from refined petroleum products, are not adequately maintained.
Pemex’s black footprint poses a problem for the environment and for citizens, particularly due to the location of its refineries.
“One of the problems is that, for example, the Tula refinery is located about 90 kilometers from Mexico City in the metropolitan area and the prevailing winds cause all this contamination to flow into the Valley of México, causing a tremendous effect on people’s health,” added Villalobos.
SO2 gasses irritate the nose, eyes and lungs and can cause severe respiratory symptoms. SO2 is also a precursor to acid rain.
The NASA report shows that Mexico’s oil and gas activity, which in addition to crude oil refining includes the operations of oil fields and fuel-fired power plants, was overall the second most polluting in the world in 2018, producing 1,580 kilotons of emissions.
Topping the list was Saudi Arabia, which produced six times more crude oil than Mexico that year, and emitted 1,783 kilotons of pollutants.
There are approximately 700 oil refineries in the world.
The federal Health Ministry reported almost 3,000 new coronavirus cases on Thursday and more than 400 deaths as hospitals in Mexico City come under increasing pressure due to the influx of seriously ill Covid-19 patients.
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell reported a new daily high of 2,973 confirmed cases at Thursday night’s coronavirus press briefing, increasing Mexico’s cumulative case tally to 59,567.
He also reported 420 additional Covid-19 fatalities, four fewer than Wednesday’s record of 424. There have now been 6,510 confirmed Covid-19 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
Based on confirmed cases and deaths, Mexico’s fatality rate is currently 10.9 per 100 cases, almost 70% higher than the global rate of 6.5.
In addition to the confirmed Covid-19 fatalities, López-Gatell said that 769 deaths are suspected of having been caused by the disease but have not yet been confirmed.
Columns 2 and 4 show the number of cases and deaths recorded each day since May 2. Columns 3 and 5 indicate total cases and deaths. milenio
Of the confirmed cases, 12,905 are considered active, the deputy minister said. There are also 33,291 suspected cases across the country, while the number of people tested has now passed 200,000.
The Valley of México metropolitan area continues to be the nation’s hotspot for active cases, with 3,339 in Mexico City and 1,376 in neighboring México state.
The Mexico City boroughs of Itzapalapa and Gustavo A. Madero rank first and second for active cases among Mexico’s almost 2,500 municipalities. Four municipalities that directly border the capital – Nezahualcóyotl, Ecatepec, Naucalpan and Tlalnepantla – rank first to fourth, respectively, for cases in México state.
As the coronavirus outbreak grows in the Valley of México – the combined number of active cases in Mexico City and México state increased by 24% over the past week – hospitalizations are on the rise.
López-Gatell presented data Thursday night that showed that 72% of general care beds set aside for patients with serious respiratory symptoms in Mexico City and 64% of those with ventilators are currently in use. Both percentages are almost twice as high as the nationwide occupancy levels.
The capital has the lowest availability of both general and critical care beds among Mexico’s 32 states while México state has the third lowest. Guerrero has the second lowest availability of general care beds while Baja California has the second lowest availability of beds with ventilators.
According to a map developed by the Mexico City government, intensive care beds are full at 31 of 44 designated Covid-19 hospitals in the capital and only one – La Villa Children’s Hospital – has “high availability” of critical care beds. The other 12 Covid-19 hospitals have a “moderate” amount of space available in their intensive care wards.
General care beds are full at 26 of the 44 hospitals and again only one has “high availability” of beds for new patients.
The death toll in the capital is almost triple that of Baja California, which has recorded 637 fatalities, the second highest total in the country. México state ranks third for Covid-19 deaths, with 622 as of Thursday.
Mexico now has the 10th highest coronavirus death toll in the world, according to the John Hopkins University tally, having passed Canada after Thursday’s fatalities were reported.
With almost 95,000 Covid-19 fatalities as of Friday morning, the United States has the highest death toll in the world followed by the United Kingdom and Italy.
Staples help prolong the life of a face mask at Veracruz hospital.
In Veracruz’s Covid-19 epicenter, health workers at one hospital say they are not just battling the contagious disease but also poor-quality personal protective equipment (PPE) that places them at increased risk of infection.
Health workers at the IMSS No. 14 High Specialty Medical Unit (UMAE) in Veracruz city told the newspaper Reforma that it has been a struggle to get any PPE at all but much of what they have received has been substandard.
“Since the [health] emergency started, it’s been difficult to deal with [IMSS] authorities to get equipment,” said one nurse.
“We had to protest twice so that they would pay attention to us. Then they finally gave us personal protective equipment but — what a surprise — it was of poor quality,” she said.
The nurse said that the medical goggles and Chinese-made face masks health workers received were not good quality, explaining that the masks tear easily. She also said that there is a lack of medical gloves at the hospital in the port city, where almost 40% of Veracruz’s 2,288 confirmed Covid-19 cases have been detected.
“If there are gloves, they’re large size ones. It’s very difficult to work with gloves that aren’t your size. It might seem like a little thing but it’s very hard to work like that,” the nurse said.
Due to the poor quality of the masks they were given, health workers have bought N95 masks using their own money and have even resorted to using staplers to repair damaged ones and thus extend the length of time they can be used, she said.
The nurse added that she and many of her colleagues have also had to purchase their own medical gowns.
As the healthcare staff have battled to save the lives of seriously ill Covid-19 patients, at least two of their colleagues have been infected and one of them lost his life to the disease.
An administrative worker died on Wednesday last week after testing positive for Covid-19, Reforma reported, and a nurse is hospitalized in a serious but stable condition.
The hospital also lacks other essential supplies such as rubbing alcohol and antibacterial gel, and some of the approximately 100 ventilators are faulty, a doctor said.
However, one thing the facility doesn’t lack is hospital beds, he said, explaining that 318 are currently available.
“Even though there are a lot of admissions, there are also a lot of deaths,” he said before questioning whether all Covid-19 fatalities are being reported by Veracruz health authorities.
“They’re not recording them properly; I think they lie in the statistics,” the doctor said.
According to the state government, 284 Covid-19 patients have died since the start of the pandemic, including 77 in Veracruz city.
However, the doctor claimed that there were more Covid-19 deaths at the UMAE during a two-day period earlier this month than those reported by the state Health Ministry for the entire city of Veracruz.
Despite the challenges and risks of working at the IMSS facility, one nurse responded bluntly when asked by Reforma whether she had considered “abandoning ship.”
“Abandon ship? Never! I love what I do and I feel happy to be able to help during this [pandemic].”
Is everyone as happy as AMLO? His new index may provide the answer.
President López Obrador is preparing to launch an “alternative index” that will measure people’s happiness and well-being in addition to economic growth.
“I’m working now on an index to measure well-being, an alternative index to the so-called gross domestic product. I’m going to present a new parameter that will measure growth but also well-being and degrees of social inequality,” he told reporters at his regular news conference on Thursday.
“Another ingredient in this new parameter, this new paradigm, [will be] the happiness of the people. The technocrats won’t like it, … but if they don’t like it, it’s probably good for us,” López Obrador said.
“There are countries where the level of happiness is measured and that’s part of well-being. I’m making the formula, we’re going to apply it in Mexico. It’s a different measurement system and we’ll probably also contribute to having other parameters in the world in order to know if there really is well-being. … It’s not just about accumulating wealth and even less so if wealth accumulates in just a few hands,” he said.
“The distribution of income is what’s important, the distribution of wealth – well-being, in other words.”
In developing his new index, López Obrador said that he will consult with the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean and seek contributions from econometricians, mathematicians, economists, sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists and other experts.
“… It’s something new, an interesting contribution; thinking about the return to the ‘new normal’ [from the coronavirus pandemic], we can’t continue living in the same way,” he said.
The president has long railed against using GDP growth as a sole measure to assess the performance of the economy and in turn people’s economic and social well-being, although he embraced it as a target when he took office
Analysts and financial institutions are forecasting a deep recession for the Mexican economy in 2020, providing López Obrador with added incentive to attempt to divert focus from GDP figures that will almost certainly make for reading that is more “sad, sad, sad” than “happy, happy, happy.”
