The National Institute of Respiratory Diseases in Mexico City, where the first coronavirus death was recorded.
A 41-year-old México state man with coronavirus has died in hospital in Mexico City, becoming the first fatality of the infectious disease in Mexico.
The Health Ministry also said that the number of confirmed cases increased by 25 on Wednesday to a total of 118.
The ministry announced the death on Twitter just before 11:00 p.m. Wednesday, stating that the man first developed symptoms of Covid-19 on March 9 and that he suffered from diabetes.
“The Health Ministry expresses its condolences to his family. Rest in peace,” the tweet concluded.
Earlier on Wednesday night, the deceased man’s wife told reporters at the National Institute of Respiratory Diseases in southern Mexico City that all her husband’s organs had failed.
Asked whether her husband was confirmed to have Covid-19, she responded:
“They [medical personnel] told me he did but they never showed me anything, no papers or laboratory tests, but they declared that he had it. First they told me he had pneumonia because of influenza.”
The woman said that her husband had been in the hospital for five days and that he had never previously had a respiratory illness.
Asked where she believed her husband was infected with Covid-19, the woman said that it was “probably” at a concert at the Palacio de los Deportes arena in Mexico City on March 3. The Swedish rock band Ghost played at the venue that night.
Meanwhile, Mexico recorded on Wednesday its second highest number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 on a single day.
In addition to announcing that the 25 new confirmed cases increased the total number of patients with Covid-19 to 118, Health Ministry Director of Epidemiology José Luis Alomía said that there were 314 suspected coronavirus cases in Mexico, an increase of 108 compared to Tuesday.
Three Covid-19 patients were in serious condition and three others had been discharged from the hospital, he said.
There are now confirmed coronavirus cases in 24 of Mexico’s 32 federal entities.
Mexico City has the highest number of confirmed cases, with 24, followed by Nuevo León, México state, Puebla and Yucatán, where there are 19, 10, 9 and 8 cases respectively.
Alomía said that authorities had identified the spread of Covid-19 between members of two families but added that Mexico is still in phase 1 of the outbreak, meaning that the confirmed coronavirus cases are related to travel from abroad.
Mexico’s public health system could be overwhelmed if the government’s predictions on the number of people who will be infected with coronavirus Covid-19 come true.
Ruy López Ridaura, director of the National Center for Disease Prevention and Control Programs, said Tuesday that 0.2% of Mexico’s population, or more than 250,000 people, could catch Covid-19 if there is a widespread outbreak.
Most will have only mild symptoms but more than 24,500 people would likely require hospitalization and just over 10,500 could need intensive care, he said.
While it is unlikely that more than 10,000 Covid-19 patients would require critical care treatment at the same time, there is still a significant chance that there will not be enough intensive care beds in public hospitals to accommodate people needing such treatment.
Public hospitals, including those operated by the social security services IMSS and ISSSTE as well as Pemex, the army and the navy, have about 3,000 intensive care beds available for Covid-19 patients that require them, said Gustavo Reyes Terán, head of the commission that manages Mexico’s national health institutes and specialty hospitals.
López: more than 250,000 people could be infected by the virus.
In light of the potential for an overwhelming demand for public hospital beds, Health Minister Jorge Alcocer said Tuesday that hospitals would be reconfigured in order to be able to cope with any large influx of Covid-19 patients.
He also said that the Health Ministry could seek to collaborate with private hospitals in order to ensure that everyone receives the treatment they require.
Alcocer ruled out the possibility of building a new hospital to accommodate coronavirus patients, as occurred in China, stating that it wasn’t necessary. However, authorities in Hidalgo have set up an inflatable hospital in Pachuca to deal with a possible influx of coronavirus patients.
Besides a possible lack of beds, Mexico will also be forced to respond to any widespread coronavirus outbreak with a low nurse-to-doctor ratio.
According to an Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report published last November, Mexico has only 1.2 nurses for each doctor whereas the average among the 36 OECD member countries is 2.7.
There are also concerns about whether the government’s new universal health scheme, which has been plagued with problems since its introduction at the start of this year, will be able to cope with an influx of Covid-19 patients seeking free treatment.
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“The Insabi [National Institute of Health for Well-Being] system is nowhere near ready,” Tony Payan, a Mexico scholar at the Baker Institute at Rice University, told Americas Quarterly (AQ).
Other observers said that Insabi, and the public health system in general, need a massive injection of funds if Mexico wants to have a fighting chance of limiting the impact of coronavirus.
“There’s no budget. If we have 6,000 patients we won’t have the resources,” Xavier Tello, a Mexican health policy consultant, told AQ.
However, the government, which has implemented a range of austerity measures to save money – and came under fire in 2019 for cutting healthcare funding – would likely be unprepared to substantially increase the budget of the public health system.
“Unfortunately spending on health has been affected. It’s worrisome that we’ll confront this crisis with coronavirus in this context. We won’t be as prepared as we should be,” Mariana Campos, an analyst with the México Evalúa think tank, told AQ.
One positive is that Mexico has a relatively young population, meaning that there is a smaller pool of people aged over 65 who could become infected with Covid-19 and face serious complications as a result of their age.
Only 7% of Mexico’s population is aged over 65, AQ reported, compared to almost 16% in the United States and 23% in Italy.
There were 93 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Mexico as of Tuesday but the number is expected to increase quickly as the country moves into a stage of community transmission that health officials say could start next week.
Travelers can get a break on cancellation charges.
Thanks to Covid-19, many travelers have made the tough decision to stay put rather than embark on a well-earned vacation to Mexico.
While the idea of missing an amazing trip is a blow, the financial impact of having to re-buy flights later could be devastating for some.
To help, many airlines have instituted temporary flexible cancellation policies, which could mean travelers can reschedule flights with no extra costs when the pandemic has died down.
Below is an (almost) complete list of those temporary cancellation policies from airlines flying into Mexico.
The policies apply to those who booked directly through the airline. If you booked through a booking agency or travel agent, you need to contact them to see if there are any additional change fees.
Always check directly with the airline to confirm before booking – terms and conditions apply to all the policies below and may not be included here.
Aeromar
Aeromar will not charge a change fee for flights scheduled between March 13 and 31, 2020. However, changes are subject to availability and, if there’s a difference between the original rate and the new ticket, travelers will need to pay it.
Aeromexico has announced a raft of temporary policies. However, these depend on your flight details and when you booked your ticket. To find the policy that applies to your flight, click for full details below.
Air Canada is employing plenty of flexibility options with customers able to cancel or postpone their travel arrangements with little to no fees. Those making a new booking before March 31 for a trip taken before the end of the year can also change flights without a fee. Non-refundable flights will get a credit toward future travel.
Those who are flying with Air France before May 31, 2020 can postpone their trip without change fees. However, the trip must begin no later than November 30, 2020. Those who booked with Air France directly can obtain a non-refundable travel voucher valid for one year, which can be used on all Air France, KLM, Delta Air Lines and Virgin Atlantic flights.
American Airlines is offering no change fees for tickets purchased before March 1 for travel until April 30. Travelers have until the end of the year to rebook their flights.
Delta, like many others, is allowing its customers to change their travel plans without a change fee. This applies to all flights departing in March and April 2020, plus tickets purchased in March 2020.
Emirates is allowing all those who made a booking on or before March 31 to change their travel dates with no charges. However, as with many other airlines, differences in airfare or taxes will have to be covered by the traveler.
Full details:Click here
Interjet
Interjet is canceling flight-change charges on all routes for those who purchased flights after March 13 and are traveling up to May 31. Any difference in ticket cost will be covered by the traveler. Those who booked before March 13 can change their flight date free of charge on flights on the same route and fare class. Again, price differences are covered by the traveler.
Travelers who have booked a flight set to leave up to and including May 31, 2020, can change their travel dates without paying a change fee. You can also change the destination and use the full value of the original tickets on KLM, Air France, Delta Air Lines or Virgin Atlantic flights. Alternatively, non-refundable vouchers, valid for a year, can also be secured.
Lufthansa is waiving rebooking fees for many of its travelers, including travelers who book a new ticket up until March 31, 2020. However, there are some stipulations so make sure to check Lufthansa’s policy below.
Turkish Airlines has brought in a zero change fee policy for its international flights for tickets purchased on or before March 31, 2020.
Full details:Click here
United Airlines
Travelers who book a flight between March 3 and March 31, 2020, can change for free over the next year. United is also waiving change fees for tickets issued on or before March 2 with original travel dates of March 9 to April 30, 2020.
Travelers flying between the United States and Mexico will be able to make date changes on the same route without any charges. However, if there are fare differences these will need to be covered by the traveler.
For flights departing before March 31, travelers will have their change fee waived. For flights departing after, travelers can rebook at the available fare with a 750-peso change fee.
The municipal government of San Pedro Garza García, Nuevo León, declared a state of emergency in response to an outbreak of Covid-19 and is essentially in quarantine.
There are currently 12 confirmed cases in the municipality that forms part of the greater Monterrey metropolitan area.
“We’ve come to find out that the virus known as Covid-19 is highly contagious from person to person and can be fatal, particularly for the elderly or people with high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity,” said municipal secretary José Dávalos Siller.
Mayor Miguel Bernardo Treviño de Hoyos issued a statement declaring the state of emergency on Tuesday.
The municipal government is taking specific steps to attempt to mitigate further spread of the virus, ordering the closure of all bars, cantinas, restaurants, sports and recreation facilities, nightclubs and public markets.
It has also suspended all public events, as well as the issuance of permits for future events, and it canceled any valid permits that had already been granted.
Services offered by all non-emergency public institutions like libraries, community centers and museums are suspended or restricted.
Citizens have been ordered not to congregate in parks or other public spaces, though they may walk through them.
The city government urged residents to stay in their homes except for urgent or other essential cases.
The declaration puts the city’s medical centers, rescue units and Civil Protection agency on high alert and mobilizes its security forces to take action against anyone who opposes the stipulations of the emergency declaration.
The measures are similar to those that will take effect if and when the federal government declares Phase 2 in its efforts to contain the virus.
The Perdiz field will be costly at today's oil prices.
The oil sector regulator has raised a red flag over the federal government’s decision to pour more money into an onshore field in Veracruz where the cost of extracting each barrel of crude will be slightly higher than the average per barrel price during the last week.
The government has given the green light to state oil company Pemex to invest US$87 million at the 47-square-kilometer Perdiz field over the next 14 years with the aim of extracting an additional 3.3 million barrels of heavy crude. Since 2014, Pemex has extracted 2 million barrels of crude from the field with an investment of $44 million.
The cost of crude extraction between 2020 and 2034 will be $24 per barrel, 10 cents higher than the average per barrel price of Mexico’s export grade oil mix over the past week.
The price has taken a hit due to the spread of coronavirus, growing pessimism over the impact the disease will have on the global economy and an oil price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia. It slumped more than 20% on Tuesday to $18.78, its lowest level in 18 years.
If crude prices remain low, the plan to extract an additional 3.3 billion barrels from the Perdiz field, located near the city of Tierra Blanca, would not be economically viable for Pemex, which already has debt in excess of $100 billion.
In that context, the National Hydrocarbons Commission (CNH), the oil sector regulator, urged the federal government to reconsider the oil price models it uses to evaluate the viability of projects.
The CNH said that the cost-benefit analysis for the planned future extraction at the Perdiz field was based on a per barrel crude price of $55, a figure three times the price a barrel of Mexican crude was selling for on Tuesday.
Even if the crude price were to increase to that level, future extraction at the Perdiz field would be only marginally profitable once Pemex’s per barrel tax burden is taken into account, the CNH said.
According to commission chief Néstor Martínez, predicting oil prices will become increasingly difficult due to market uncertainty and thus long-term plans, such as the 14-year one in Veracruz, must be constantly reviewed.
The effects of the global Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Saudi Arabia price war are finally being seen at Mexican gas pumps, as prices drop to their lowest in years.
Per-liter prices have fallen 1.01 pesos on average across the country in the last week. Drivers in Mexico City have seen them fall an average of 79 cents in that time, with some stations posting prices under 17 pesos per liter.
The average liter of gasoline in Mexico City cost 20.38 pesos (US $0.85) on March 11. On Tuesday, it was 19.59 pesos.
One gas station on the Mexicaltzingo-Santiago Tianguistenco highway in México state was selling a liter of gas for as low as 15.71 pesos on Wednesday.
Stations in Tamaulipas posted prices as low as 11.99 pesos and one in Chihuahua was down to 10.50 per liter.
“Yes, [prices] have fallen, but not at the same rate in all gas stations, because several factors come into play,” said the president of the Organization of Petroleum Sellers (Onexpo), Roberto Díaz de León.
He said that it may take some stations longer to buy the cheaper gas, so they still have to charge higher prices for fuel bought a week ago when the market was much different.
The price of Mexican crude oil for export fell to US $18.78 per barrel on Tuesday, its lowest in 18 years.
Mexico is facing growing criticism for its response to the global coronavirus pandemic, with one scientist warning that the country “could end up in a situation like Italy,” where there are tens of thousands of confirmed Covid-19 cases and more than 2,500 people have died.
The federal government has announced a social distancing initiative to encourage people to avoid close contact — which doesn’t go into effect until March 23, more and more large events are either being postponed or cancelled and schools and universities are set to close in the coming days if they haven’t already done so.
However, the government is not considering closing Mexico’s borders even as many other countries restrict or ban the entry of foreigners as part of efforts to contain the spread of Covid-19, while President López Obrador has been criticized for continuing his campaign-style rallies at which he greets throngs of supporters with hugs, kisses and handshakes.
The president “is under fire for his blasé attitude about the coronavirus,” Adam Isacson, director of defense oversight for the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), told the news website The Hill in an e-mail.
“He is leaving border states and towns picking up the slack. Many won’t be able to do so,” he wrote.
Critics of the federal government’s largely hands-off approach to preparing for an expected widespread outbreak of coronavirus say that it is driven by bad memories of a shutdown in Mexico in 2009 due to the H1N1, or swine flu, pandemic that deepened the country’s recession.
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Authorities acted quickly at the time, shutting down public life in Mexico City and other parts of the country. The spread of the swine flu was swiftly contained and normality resumed within weeks. However, the response shaved a percentage point off GDP growth in 2009, according to some estimates, at a time when the economy was already struggling as a result of the global financial crisis. GDP ended up contracting 5.3% in 2009, the economy’s biggest decline since 1995.
Now, according to a report by the news agency Reuters, “the gamble is straightforward: Mexico’s economy was stagnating even before the Covid-19 outbreak shuttered factories worldwide and the government has said it wants to limit economic damage by not over-reacting.”
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell, the government’s main spokesperson on the coronavirus pandemic, said last week that “the economic loss” in 2009 “was directly related, in the most past, to the disruption of tourism, trade and services.”
López-Gatell, a senior official in the Health Ministry’s epidemiology department during the swine flu crisis, said that is “why it is so important, with very careful precision, not to take preemptive actions that do not correspond to the magnitude of the risk.”
Isacson: virus will likely sweep through migrant shelters.
“Acting responsibly, we can’t and should not take measures that exhaust our society. Let’s not use up all the interventions too soon. Let’s keep our calm,” López-Gatell said.
For his part, President López Obrador on Wednesday ruled out closing airports and implementing other tough measures such as closing restaurants, asserting that he is aiming to prevent a complete shutdown of the economy that would hurt the poor.
López Obrador said that there are “pressures of all types” to respond in a more extreme way to the growing threat of a widespread Covid-19 outbreak but his government won’t bow to them.
“Close the airport, shut down everything, paralyze the economy. No,” he told reporters at his regular news conference.
“Of course we’re worried about the situation of the epidemic, and we have to attend to it, but we also have to act responsibly.”
According to a report by the news agency Bloomberg, the Mexican economy is facing a perfect storm due to a possible recession in the United States – the country’s largest trading partner, a drastic reduction in oil revenue due to the slump in crude prices and a downturn in tourism as travelers stay at home as Covid-19 spreads around the world.
Investment bank Credit Suisse is now predicting that the Mexican economy will contract by 4% this year but López Obrador expressed optimism that the global economy will stabilize as a result of the “direct, deep” intervention of the United States government.
“They will do everything to stabilize so that helps every country in the world,” he said, adding that his government will tighten the budget while expanding its signature welfare programs such as pensions for the elderly.
While the federal government is taking a softly-softly approach to responding to the coronavirus threat for fear of hurting the economy, some Mexican scientists are worried about what the impact of not acting more quickly and broadly will be.
“I am worried that we [will] end up in a situation like Italy, where measures weren’t taken on time, and the number of cases started to get away from them,” said Rosa María del Angel, head of the Department of Infectomics and Molecular Pathogenesis at the National Polytechnic Institute.
In the event of a widespread outbreak, wealthier states are likely to be much better equipped to respond than poorer ones such as Chiapas, Oaxaca and Guerrero in Mexico’s south. The security situation in individual states could also affect authorities’ ability to respond to the potential need to provide medical treatment to a large number of Covid-19 patients.
In Tamaulipas, for example, where cartel-fueled violence is a major problem, Isacson, the WOLA defense oversight director, said that the capacity of authorities is unclear.
Bukele of El Salvador urges Mexico to take the coronavirus more seriously.
“I don’t even have a good sense of what local authorities are doing and whether the security situation will hamper response,” he told The Hill.
Isacson also said that a widespread outbreak of Covid-19 could pose a particular threat to thousands of migrants living in shelters and camps along the Mexico-United States border.
“It will be an absolute miracle if the virus doesn’t sweep through those shelters and camps like a genuine plague. And I don’t see preparations for that underway. When chicken pox swept through the Mexican government shelter in [Ciudad] Juárez over the holidays, they just closed it for a few days. I don’t see what good that will do,” he wrote.
The government’s apparent failure to take the coronavirus threat seriously has also led to a spat between Mexico and El Salvador.
The president of the Central American nation, Nayib Bukele, claimed Monday that 12 people confirmed to have Covid-19 were intending to travel to San Salvador from Mexico City and criticized Mexico for not stopping them.
Although Mexico said that none of the 12 people in question had coronavirus or had even been tested for it, the airline Avianca cancelled the flight after Bukele said it wouldn’t be allowed to land in El Salvador.
In a Twitter message directed to Mexico’s Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, the Salvadoran president urged Mexico to take the coronavirus threat more seriously.
“I beg you to take drastic and forceful measures in the face of this pandemic. Mexico is a very big country and its responsibility should be too,” Bukele wrote.
“Otherwise, in 20 days the epicenter of this pandemic will not be Europe, but North America. Stop looking at this as something normal, please.”
Authorities are searching for the former head of the Criminal Investigation Agency (AIC), Tomás Zerón, and his team for irregularities in the case of the 43 missing students from the Ayotzinapa teachers college.
The charges include torture, forced disappearance, evidence tampering and altering the crime scene. The arrest warrant was issued on March 10.
As federal reports indicate that he is currently located in Canada, Interpol has issued a Red Notice for Zerón, which initiates an international search.
The accusations against him stem from events that occurred on October 28, 2014, in Río San Juan de Cocula, Guerrero, but were not entered into the official case documentation.
That day Zerón allegedly took one of the suspects in the disappearances, Agustín “El Chereje” García Reyes, to one of the crime scenes with neither a lawyer present nor official authorization to do so.
A video released in 2016 shows the two in an area where at least one bag of burned human remains was found, evidence that was used to back up the investigator’s report and formed the basis of the so-called “historical truth,” the former federal government’s official version of events of what happened on September 26, 2014, in Iguala, Guerrero.
That version was released to the public in late 2014, and an independent team of experts invited to help with the investigation said in April 2016 that Mexican authorities were too “married” to the official version for them to uncover the actual truth of the night’s events.
The federal Attorney General’s Office says that Zerón also wrongfully ordered forensic personnel to look for bags containing human remains in the river in order to distract them from other parts of the search area.
Authorities said that it was sufficient evidence to assume that Zerón and his team fabricated the “historical truth” version of the story.
Another former AIC official, Ezequiel Peña Cerda, was arrested on Tuesday on charges of torture of one of the alleged perpetrators of the attack.
Parents of the missing students met with President López Obrador on March 5 to ask him to have the Financial Intelligence Unit investigate public officials who intervened in the Ayotzinapa case.
These include, in addition to Zerón, former Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam, former Iguala Mayor José Luis Abarca and his wife, among others.
Families of the missing students have long claimed that Zerón fabricated evidence.
The US Consulate in Monterrey will continue processing visas for agricultural workers.
The United States Embassy and consulates in Mexico began limiting services in response to the Covid-19 global pandemic on Tuesday until further notice.
The facilities will not shut down completely but will modify essential services to comply with the practice of social distancing.
“The U.S. Embassy and consulates will continue to provide essential consular services to U.S. citizens as well as emergency visa services,” said the U.S. State Department in a statement posted on March 16.
Routine passport and notarial services were to be minimized as of Wednesday, and citizens who already had appointments scheduled after that day will be asked to reschedule them for later dates.
Visa services will be suspended at the embassy in Mexico City and all consulates except for the one in Monterrey, Nuevo León. The consulate issued a statement late Tuesday saying that it would still process non-immigrant H-2 visas but modify its procedures to limit human contact as much as possible.
“The U.S. Consulate General Monterrey will prioritize the processing of returning H-2 workers who are eligible for an interview waiver. Because limited interview appointments will be available, we may cancel some first-time applicant appointments that have already been scheduled,” the statement read.
The H-2 visa is critical to the U.S. agricultural sector, as farmers need the temporary workers to harvest their crops. The program provides a legal framework by which around 200,000 foreign workers work in U.S. fields every year.
The American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) said that a drop in the number of H-2 visa workers could lead to food shortages and economic hardship for farmers.
AFBF president Zippy Duval said that the State Department’s initial move to halt all visa applications in the country threatened U.S. farmers’ “ability to put food on America’s tables.”
The second quarter, from April to June, is the busiest time of year for contracting temporary farmworkers from Mexico. U.S. Labor Department statistics show that nearly 40% of workers contracted through the H-2 visa system arrive to work in the months of March and April.
“We fully support the administration’s efforts to protect the public during this health crisis. … We have urged [the U.S. government] to find safe, practical ways to admit farm laborers as emergency workers for visa purposes while still protecting public health. Failing to do so will impact our ability to provide a healthy, affordable, domestic food supply,” he said.
The U.S. Embassy said that emergency services are still available by calling 81-4160-5512 from Mexico or +1 (844) 528-6611 from the United States. Citizens can also keep up with the State Department’s coronavirus information here.
Two Mexico City police officers were arrested after stealing a young man’s iPhone in the trendy neighborhood of Roma on Tuesday.
Internal affairs agents arrested Ernesto Santiago A. and Julio César G., who had carried out a personal body inspection on a citizen on the street under the pretext that “he looked suspicious.”
The victim was stopped by the officers on the corner of Insurgentes and Tehuantepec streets and searched without justification or order from a higher authority.
The internal affairs agents arrived on the scene during the search and asked the 28-year-old man what happened. He told them that the officers had stopped him without reason and accused them of taking his iPhone XR.
The officers denied stealing anything, but the agents decided to check: they called the phone and heard it ringing inside the patrol car.
The citizen requested that the officers be arrested and taken before a judge.
The officers were taken to the public servants division of the city Attorney General’s Office, where an investigation was opened into the crime.
