In 4 states and CDMX, local-level stats showing Covid-19 infection are secret

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April 15, 2020

Approximately three in 10 Mexicans cannot access information about the spread of Covid-19 in the area where they live because four states and Mexico City don’t publish any local-level data about infections.

An investigation by the news website Quinto Elemento Lab (QEL) found that the governments of México state, Querétaro, Tlaxcala and Yucatán are not revealing data about coronavirus outbreaks at the municipal level, while the government of Mexico City is not providing statistics for any of the capital’s 16 boroughs.

More than 33 million people, or almost 30% of Mexico’s population, live in the five federal entities that are not disclosing any municipal-level statistics.

The governments say that publishing information such as the number of confirmed and suspected cases of Covid-19, the death toll, hospitalization rates and the sex and age of those infected at a local level could violate patients’ privacy, lead to discrimination against them and cause panic among residents.

However, via a review of the websites of state governments and their health ministries as well as their official social media accounts, QEL found that all of the other 27 federal entities in Mexico do provide at least some information about coronavirus outbreaks at a municipal level.

In the case of México state – which currently has the second highest number of both confirmed Covid-19 cases and deaths after Mexico City – health officials have said that only state-level statistics are published in order to avoid panic among residents in municipalities with large outbreaks.

In Querétaro, Health Services Director Martina Pérez Rendón said that the state government decided not to disclose coronavirus data for each municipality in order to avoid discrimination and acts of aggression against infected people and their families. However, she added that the government could decide to publish municipal-level data as the number of cases in the state grows.

Querétaro had recorded 65 confirmed coronavirus cases as of Tuesday and four deaths, according to data from the federal Health Ministry.

The authorities in Tlaxcala – where there are 51 confirmed cases – said that they don’t publish the location of infections because doing so could place people’s privacy at risk.

A health official in Mexico City – which has more than 1,500 confirmed cases – said that information for each borough is not published because people from other states are being treated for coronavirus in the capital, meaning that the data could be distorted.

While the Yucatán government doesn’t offer any data about Covid-19 infection rates at a municipal level, one positive note is that it provides information about the disease and social distancing recommendations in both Spanish and Maya. The state had 116 confirmed cases as of Tuesday.

The lack of detailed data about localized coronavirus outbreaks could place lives at risk, according to Michael Bess, a researcher at Mexico City’s Center for Economic Research and Teaching and a member of the university’s coronavirus data tracking team.

“As we have seen in the whole world, access to information is one of the best ways to combat this disease, … we have to know where the biggest clusters are,” he said.

Among the 27 states that do provide at least some information, Guanajuato is the most transparent, according to the QEL investigation, followed by Aguascalientes, Veracruz, Tamaulipas and Coahuila.

To rank the states in terms of transparency, QEL took a range of factors into account including how often data is updated, how detailed it is and how easy it is to find.

Since the beginning of the Covid-9 epidemic in Mexico, the Guanajuato government has reported both confirmed and suspected Covid-19 cases in each of the state’s 46 municipalities on a government website.

It also provides data on deaths at a municipal level and details the number of people who have recovered from the disease. In addition, the government offers a daily epidemiological report with detailed information about Covid-19 patients and the hospitals treating them.

A spokesperson for the Guanajuato Health Ministry said that as a result of being well-informed, residents have offered financial support to hospitals in affected municipalities and made donations to them.

The government of Aguascalientes and Veracruz have also created websites where they provide detailed information about the coronavirus outbreak at a municipal level. Officials in both states said that the data allows people to be better informed and helps them to protect themselves against infection.

QEL‘s transparency ranking table and information about what each state is doing to inform citizens about coronavirus in the municipality where they live can be accessed by clicking here (Spanish only).

One reason why there is so much discrepancy between the states in terms of the information they offer is that the federal Health Ministry has not issued any guidelines about what data should be published.

QEL said that the federal government itself has been circumspect in revealing detailed information about localized coronavirus outbreaks, noting that the Health Ministry’s general director of health promotion suggested that people wouldn’t take the pandemic seriously if they knew that their local area wasn’t overly affected.

“If half of the deaths are in Tingüindín, Michoacán, people in Mexico City will say: ‘I’m not in Tingüindín, my risk is less,” Ricardo Cortés said in late March.

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Guide criticized for recommending young Covid-19 patients be saved first

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Susy Buchanan

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April 15, 2020

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senior, child with face masks — Who will get priority treatment?

A controversial guide on how to prioritize coronavirus cases under extreme circumstances is drawing fire from experts and academics across Mexico.

Among the opponents is the National Autonomous University (UNAM), which announced it will not be abiding by the terms outlined in the Mexican General Health Council’s Bioethical Guide to Allocation of Critical Medicine Resources, published last weekend, which argues that the lives of younger people should be prioritized over those of older people should the medical system become overwhelmed.

The 13-page document was signed onto by 13 academics and physicians, including several UNAM staff members, but UNAM leadership was not consulted. “Neither UNAM nor its rector, Dr. Enrique Graue Wiechers, were summoned to any plenary session for the analysis, discussion and eventual approval of the guide,” UNAM said in a statement denouncing the report’s findings.

But it’s not just how the report was created that is drawing criticism, it’s also the conclusions it draws on as to who should live or die.

“This document is intended to be a bioethical guide to triage decision-making when a public health emergency creates a demand for critical medicine resources that cannot be satisfied,” the introduction reads. “This guide should only come into operation if existing critical care capacity is overwhelmed, or close to being exceeded, and it is not possible to refer patients who need care to other facilities.”

During normal times, all lives matter equally, the guide states, quoting English philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s ethical theory on equality, that “each person is to count for one, no one for more than one.”

However, with coronavirus, which the report says can present serious complications in about 5% of patients, there are different considerations that must come into play when making life and death decisions.

“Patient A, 80 years old, needs a ventilator. Patient B, 20 years old, needs a ventilator. If patient A receives the ventilator she will live seven more years, if patient B receives a ventilator she will live 65 more years,” the guide posits. “Faced with this problem, an additional principle must be introduced: save the greatest number of lives to be completed.”

The university is not alone in its criticism of the guide. Gabriel García Colorado, president of Mexico’s Association of Bioethics and Human Rights, has been public with his disdain for the government’s report.

“They could call it a guide for optimizing financial resources, medical equipment or human resources, but it is not a bioethics guide, because then the state would try to have resources available to all patients, where preference should never be given,” García said.

While other countries such as Italy and Spain have adopted similar protocols to those outlined in the guide, what works for those countries is not appropriate in Mexico, he argues, comparing the recommendations to those used by doctors in Nazi Germany who discarded the old, sick and disabled as unworthy of life.

Rodrigo Guerra López, member of Mexico’s Advanced Social Research Center, concurs. “The human rights of all people must be recognized and respected,” he said. “It is not ethically justifiable to discard a patient because he or she has lived longer or has some pathology, and doing so incurs discrimination, abandonment and violence against the most vulnerable.”

Source: El Universal (sp)

Radar Jalisco: process will rapid-test 500 people a day for Covid-19

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MND Staff

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April 15, 2020

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Not testing represents missed opportunities to save lives, said Governor Alfaro, left.

Authorities in Jalisco will perform 500 PCR coronavirus tests per day starting on Thursday, Governor Enrique Alfaro said on Tuesday.

Alfaro said that the state government developed the so-called “Radar Jalisco Covid-19 Active Detection System” in conjunction with the University of Guadalajara.

To request a polymerase chain reaction — PCR — test, Jalisco residents must phone a call center that has been set up for the purpose at 33-3540-3001. Final year medicine students will field the calls, determine whether a test is necessary, schedule the tests and provide general information about Covid-19.

The PCR tests will mainly be carried out in the parking lot of the University of Guadalajara Center of Health Sciences but Alfaro said that PCR testing will be available statewide.

Those being tested will remain in their cars to avoid coming into close contact with other people suspected of having Covid-19. The samples will be sent to one of four laboratories for analysis and results will be known in 24-72 hours.

The state government will provide 7,000 PCR tests for the month-long testing initiative while the University of Guadalajara will supply 5,000. Their combined outlay for the testing scheme will be 47.1 million pesos (almost US $2 million).

Governor Alfaro acknowledged that federal authorities have said that there are no reliable rapid Covid-19 tests, adding that they are currently blocking their importation.

In that context, the Jalisco government turned its focus to carrying out a testing scheme using PCR tests, he said.

Alfaro asserted that each day on which large numbers of tests are not carried out represents a missed opportunity to save the lives of Mexicans, adding that he was unconcerned that Jalisco’s coronavirus statistics will increase on paper.

“What we’re doing here is looking after lives. … What we want is to know where we stand – not to be building a strategy blindly,” he said. The aim of “Radar Jalisco” is to test 100% of people with Covid-19 symptoms, he said.

Jalisco had recorded 165 confirmed coronavirus cases as of Tuesday and 11 deaths, according to data from the federal Health Ministry.

The federal government has faced criticism for the low coronavirus testing rate in Mexico, where just over 40,000 people had been tested as of Tuesday.

Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said last week that the real size of the Covid-19 outbreak in Mexico is likely eight times bigger than that shown by the number of confirmed cases of the disease.

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

Workers at Oaxaca hospital protest lack of equipment, personnel

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Susy Buchanan

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April 15, 2020

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Hospital workers protest equipment shortages.

Doctors, nurses and orderlies at the general hospital in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, reproached federal and state government health authorities for plans to send the hospital coronavirus patients without first supplying it with adequate medical equipment and trained personnel.

Currently, coronavirus patients in Oaxaca are being treated at San Pedro Pochutla and Pinotepa National hospitals.

Clad in masks and medical gowns, the hospital’s staff met government authorities, including Manuel Ruiz López, representative of the social security agency Insabi, and the head of state health services, Donato Casas Escamilla, at the hospital’s door, demanding the supplies and procedural measures they need to care for infected patients.

Emergency rooms lack sanitary filters, they claimed, and hiring practices have not matched the increased demand for pandemic-related medical services.

Critical personal protective equipment, such as gloves, masks and hand sanitizer, is lacking, and the pandemic has “caught us with our pants down,” they said, demanding action. “It is sad and regrettable that as high-level officials they have only stopped at this hospital to take their picture,” said paramedic Iván Reséndiz.

Health Secretary Casas called on doctors and nurses to redouble efforts to care for coronavirus patients, vowing to work with the federal government to support hospitals during the pandemic and ensure the safety of medical personnel providing direct care.

Casas reiterated the importance of working as a team for the health of all Oaxacans.

“Now more than ever we must work together. I know that there are needs in each hospital, and we are working to meet them as soon as possible, but today, we are facing a health emergency that requires joint efforts. Governor Alejandro Murat’s administration is taking the necessary steps to continue providing all hospitals with necessary supplies,” he said.

He asked the directors of the hospitals to manage clear and permanent communication with the staff in their charge, as well as with the rest of the first and second level units to refer patients. He also exhorted them to make good use of personal security equipment, to handle responsible information about patients, and to work in coordination with municipal authorities.

In Oaxaca there are currently 46 confirmed coronavirus case, 60 suspected cases and five fatalities.

Source: Tvbus (sp), Multimedios (sp)

Father jailed for making his children beg in the street

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Cody Copeland

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April 15, 2020

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An indigenous man in Aguascalientes has been ordered into preventative custody after being arrested for forcing his children to juggle, perform acrobatic tricks, sell seeds and beg for money on the street.

The Mixtec man identified as Galindo allegedly compelled his children — aged 9, 12 and 15 — to collect at least 350 pesos (US $14.50) per day and beat them with various objects when they failed to do so. The abuse was carried out in the family home.

The identities of the minors have been withheld in order to protect their safety, but evidence against Galindo provided by a special women’s investigative unit in the state justice department reveals that at least one must be female.

The evidence shows that he forced them to collect money for him in this way from the end of 2018 to March 2020.

Authorities became aware of the situation when agents from the state Attorney General’s Office saw the two older children performing acrobatic tricks at an intersection in the city. They immediately initiated a process to rescue the minors and opened a child abuse investigation into the matter.

Galindo now faces charges of human trafficking and domestic violence. The judge ordered 3 1/2 months of preventative custody in the Cereso state penitentiary just outside Aguascalientes for the duration of the preliminary investigation.

Source: El Universal (sp)

130 fined for violating mandatory quarantine in Sonora

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Cody Copeland

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April 15, 2020

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'Return home,' reads the sign at a checkpoint in Sonora.

Most citizens in Sonora stayed at home on the first day of the statewide mandatory lockdown to contain the spread of Covid-19 on Monday, but authorities still had to issue fines and apply other sanctions to force some to return home.

State Security Minister David Anaya Cooley said that police imposed 130 fines, made two arrests and impounded six vehicles as a result of people’s failure to comply with the guidelines.

“The sanctions began today and the places where they gave out the most fines were Puerto Peñasco, Hermosillo, San Luis Río Colorado, Magdalena, Huatabampo, Nogales and Cajeme,” he said on Monday night.

The state government decided to impose the full-scale lockdown after weeks of appeals to the public to observe the physical distancing and stay-at-home measures went unheeded. As of Monday, all nonessential activity outside the home and more than one person traveling in a vehicle are prohibited in Sonora.

In Hermosillo alone police meted out 64 fines under the authority of a state law that allows sanctions against anyone who refuses to follow police orders.

State transit director Jesús Alonso Durón Montaño said that authorities have set up 34 checkpoints in the capital and at its highway access points to ensure that motorists are on the road for essential business only and that families don’t leave town for vacation.

“We have informed the public, made recommendations — no more. We’ve now begun to give tickets. … Anyone on the street who cannot prove that they are carrying out essential business will be fined or [arrested],” Durón said.

Source: Milenio (sp)

It’s a matter of days before Mexico enters phase three of Covid-19 crisis

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MND Staff

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April 15, 2020

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Confirmed cases as of Tuesday, April 14. milenio

Mexico will enter phase three of the coronavirus pandemic in a matter of days, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said on Tuesday as the number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 continues to rise steadily.

Speaking at the Health Ministry’s nightly coronavirus press briefing, López-Gatell once again urged citizens to stay at home to reduce the number of new infections and thus help to avoid overwhelming the nation’s health system.

Despite the work the authorities have done to prepare the system for a large influx of patients, the spread of Covid-19 “could be so quick” during phase three that hospitals would be unable to cope, he said.

In such a scenario, the health system would experience “serious and large problems” in attending to Covid-19 patients, López-Gatell added.

The deputy minister said that the commencement of phase three is “literally” just days away and that when it arrives, the spread of Covid-19 will be “very rapid” and “irreversible.”

Coronavirus by state
State	Deaths	Cases	Suspected	Tested negative
Mexico City	92	1556	2049	4628
Estado de México	35	602	904	1800
Sinaloa	34	261	293	680
Baja California	28	412	590	766
Puebla	27	276	312	762
Quintana Roo	25	245	201	403
Tabasco	19	195	343	502
Chihuahua	16	69	186	211
Coahuila	12	194	911	920
Jalisco	11	165	620	2350
Michoacán	11	67	163	469
Hidalgo	10	64	33	377
Sonora	9	73	158	465
Morelos	9	53	79	266
Yucatán	7	116	147	511
Guerrero	6	88	142	279
Baja California Sur	5	164	198	484
Nuevo León	5	136	1919	1634
Veracruz	5	94	418	838
Guanajuato	5	90	172	1496
Oaxaca	5	46	60	330
Querétaro	4	65	68	419
San Luis Potosí	4	55	115	800
Tlaxcala	4	51	149	296
Nayarit	4	25	36	158
Tamaulipas	3	55	178	438
Chiapas	3	45	67	234
Durango	3	15	89	248
Campeche	2	33	41	95
Zacatecas	2	17	59	244
Aguascalientes	1	65	66	705
Colima		7	26	92
	Deaths	Cases	Suspected	Tested negative
Total	406	5399	10792	23900

Figures released by the Ministry of Health on Tuesday.

“What we do today [in terms of social distancing], we have few days left to do it vigorously,” López-Gatell said.

“[We have to] avoid being in contact with other people, … all of us, not just the people with greater risk of having complications [from the disease]. We insist that you stay at home; this is the measure of precaution, prevention and control that is necessary today,” he said.

Asked whether a phase three declaration could only apply to certain parts of the country that have concentrated outbreaks of Covid-19, López-Gatell responded:

“Technically it could be done … but [a] … selective process would be confusing, that’s why we’re considering a single phase three [declaration] of a national character.”

An obligatory home quarantine and a “health curfew” in which people are only permitted to leave their homes during certain hours are among the stricter restrictions that the government could choose to impose during the third phase of the pandemic, although President López Obrador said earlier this month that his administration would not seek to implement any “draconian measures.”

López-Gatell’s declaration that a phase three declaration is imminent came after Health Ministry Director of Epidemiology José Luis Alomía reported that the number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 had increased by 385 to 5,399 and that coronavirus-related deaths had risen to 406 from 332 a day earlier.

The 72 new fatalities represent the biggest single-day increase in the death toll since the first Covid-19 patient died on March 18.

Alomía also said that there are 10,792 suspected cases of Covid-19 in the country and that just over 40,000 people have now been tested. Almost 40% of those confirmed to have Covid-19 – a total of 2,125 people – have now recovered, he said.

Mexico City has the highest number of confirmed cases, with 1,556, followed by México state and Baja California, where there are 602 and 412 cases, respectively. Colima has the lowest number, with seven, followed by Durango and Zacatecas, where there are 15 and 17 cases, respectively.

Among the more than 5,000 people confirmed to have Covid-19 are nine infants aged less than one. Twenty-four pregnant women have also tested positive and four have died.

Mexico City also leads the country in terms of coronavirus-related deaths with 92 fatalities. México state and Sinaloa follow with 35 and 34 deaths, respectively. Colima is the only state that hasn’t yet recorded a fatality.

Among Covid-19 patients aged 60 or over, the fatality rate is 17.1 per 100 cases and for those aged 25-59 it is 5.6. There has only been one coronavirus-related death among those younger than 25 – a 2-year-old girl with a congenital heart defect died in Tabasco on Tuesday.

The overall fatality rate in Mexico is 7.52 per 100 cases. According to Health Ministry data, 43% of those who have died suffered from hypertension, 38% had diabetes, 34% were obese and 12% had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

As the percentages indicate, some of the deceased suffered from more than one existing health problem.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Oaxaca wildfires trigger emergency declaration in 9 municipalities

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Susy Buchanan

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April 15, 2020

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In the face of spreading wildfires, the state of Oaxaca is asking the federal government to extend its state of emergency declaration from four municipalities to nine.

The request comes after high winds intensified a fire that spread from the rural town of Santiago Juxtlahuaca on April 9 to Santos Reyes Tepillo — an indigenous town of fewer than 1,000 people in the southern Mexico state’s Mixteca region — where nine people lost their lives last week.

Representatives of the state government met with the families of those who perished to discuss offering them life insurance benefits, policies the government has reserved for accidental deaths in cases due to circumstances like the fires.

The National Forestry Commission (Conafor) reported that the fire was 75% contained. The agency said that 138 people from the communities of Santa María Tindú, San Juan Cahuayaxi, Guadalupe Mesón and Tinuma de Zaragoza were working alongside 35 firefighters from the National Defense Ministry (Sedena), 30 from the National Guard, 14 from the National Commission for Natural Protected Areas (Conanp), six from the State Forestry Commission (Coesfo), 14 rural firefighters and 24 from Conafor.

Twelve firetrucks have been dispatched, as well as two helicopters which have made at least 80 water drops in an attempt to put out the fires.

In the first four months of 2020, Oaxaca has seen 95 forest fires across the state that have charred more than 7,166 acres.

It is nothing new for Oaxaca. Last year around this time the state was fighting 172 forest fires that had consumed nearly 23,000 acres. In 2019, 129 separate forest fires burned their way through the Oaxaca countryside, destroying a devastating 48,432 acres in total.

Across Mexico, 20 states are currently reporting forest fires that have burned nearly 15,000 acres.

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

Academics predict coronavirus crisis to peak at 151,000 cases in mid-August

By

MND Staff

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April 14, 2020

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Coronavirus cases will peak in Mexico in the middle of August at more than 151,000 but the epidemic curve will start to fall in the middle of May, according to two researchers at Mexico City’s Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM).

Roberto Gutiérrez Rodríguez, head of the economics school at the UAM Iztapalapa campus, and Marco Antonio Pérez, a doctor in social sciences, predict that Covid-19 cases will peak at 151,774 in approximately four months from now.

“If health conditions and the international environment allow it,” there will be no new infections “after that point,” the researchers said in a statement issued Monday that cites data from their essay entitled Modeling the Spread of Covid-19 in Mexico.

Gutiérrez and Pérez predict that the epidemic curve will continue to rise until the middle of May at which time they anticipate there will be 55,836 Covid-19 cases in the country, a figure more than 50,000 higher than the 5,014 confirmed cases reported by the federal Health Ministry on Monday.

They said that the nation’s health system will need to be well-prepared to respond to the high number of cases in the middle of May because, according to their modeling, more people will be sick at the same time then than at any other stage of the pandemic.

The number of cases reported on a daily basis will start to decline in the second half of May, the researchers predict, a phenomenon that would allow the process of flattening the curve to begin.

Their mathematical modeling was based on public and private hospital data as well as the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases announced by the Health Ministry last Wednesday.

While the ministry reported that there were 3,181 confirmed cases that day, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said that data collected via a “proven, scientifically founded” epidemiological surveillance system suggested that the real number of cases in Mexico was more than 26,000.

The researchers said that they didn’t use the higher number for their modeling because doing so would imply changes to a range of other instructive data about the coronavirus pandemic in Mexico. The fatality rate, for example, would decrease from 5.47 per 100 cases (based on April 8 numbers) to 0.66, they said.

Gutiérrez and Pérez also offered a worst-case scenario for the coronavirus outbreak in Mexico, stating that as many as 6.3 million people could conceivably be infected with Covid-19 and 189,00 could die.

The academics said that their information “is important to determine the pace of growth of Covid-19 in society” but they acknowledged that the situation is fluid and therefore making predictions is difficult, “especially in the medium and long term.”

The “discipline of society” in terms of respecting social distancing recommendations and maintaining good hand hygiene, among other factors, will have an impact on the pace of growth of new Covid-19 infections, they said.

Given that “the infection rate is not constant or linear,” the academics said that they would update their predictions on a weekly basis.

Three week ago, when there were just 405 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Mexico, López-Gatell said that authorities expected a “long epidemic that could extend until September or October.”

A group of specialists in emergency medicine predicted last week that as many as 10,500 cases of Covid-19 in Mexico will be serious and could require treatment in intensive care while the Pan American Health Organization said in March that there could be as many as 700,000 serious, potentially fatal cases of the disease.

Source: Notimex (sp), Infobae (sp)

In Mexico, an unfolding presidential tragedy: Financial Times

By

MND Staff

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April 14, 2020

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The crisis has exposed 'new and dangerous weaknesses' in López Obrador's governance.

The business newspaper Financial Times has blasted President López Obrador for his response to the coronavirus pandemic, predicting that Mexico is likely headed for a much worse crisis in the coming years of his government unless he quickly changes course.

In an opinion piece published on Tuesday, the newspaper’s editorial board said that the coronavirus crisis has exposed “new and dangerous weaknesses” in López Obrador’s governance.

The board charged that he acted erratically in the first weeks of the pandemic, pointing out that he repeatedly violated his own government’s social distancing advice and even shook the hand of the mother of Mexico’s most infamous convicted drug trafficker, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

It also noted that he urged Mexicans to continue eating out at restaurants and hug each other “long after the rest of the world locked down.”

The president even suggested that coronavirus “fits perfectly” with his plan to transform Mexico, the board added, claiming later in its editorial that López Obrador has been relaxed about the country’s “dire shortage” of hospital beds and a coronavirus-testing rate that is among the lowest in the world.

The president kisses a child in March, as the coronavirus outbreak was beginning. — The president kisses a child in March as the coronavirus outbreak was beginning.

“Mr. López Obrador’s bungled responses and erratic behavior in the first weeks of the pandemic suggest that the country is heading for a much worse crisis in the remainder of his six-year term unless there is a dramatic change of course,” the Financial Times said.

The board said that some of López Obrador’s behavior, “particularly the coronavirus denial and undermining of medical experts,” has been similar to the conduct of other populist leaders in the region, namely United States President Donald Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, who described Covid-19 as “a little flu.”

However, in denying the need for a large stimulus package to rescue the economy from an inevitable coronavirus-fueled recession, AMLO, as the president is best known, is “in a class of his own,” the opinion piece said.

Even though “the market consensus is that Mexico will be among the countries worst hit by the pandemic because of its reliance on U.S. manufacturing, tourism, remittances and oil,” López Obrador has “ruled out extra borrowing, tax breaks or bailouts,” the Times said.

Mexico’s stance contrasts with that of the United States and Brazil, both of which have announced large countercyclical stimulus packages, the board said.

It noted that AMLO is instead betting that greater government austerity, increased oil production and an ongoing commitment to his administration’s large infrastructure projects will help Mexico through the crisis.

However, as a result of the government’s economic and health policy response to the coronavirus pandemic,“more and more voices in Mexico’s elite are speaking of a looming tragedy,” the Times said.

“Business leaders have proposed an alternative virus response plan. The odd dissenting voice within Mr. López Obrador’s governing alliance can sometimes be heard. But Mexico has an imperial presidency and an imperious president. Time is perilously short.”

Politicians from all political parties as well as state governors and business leaders should together formulate a “comprehensive economic and health” plan to confront Covid-19 and “press it upon their president,” the editorial board said, adding that legal action should be taken against his “more questionable” polices.

“The appalling human catastrophe of Venezuela stands as a clear warning of what another four and a half years of Mr. López Obrador could do to Mexico,” the Times concluded.

Mexico News Daily