The number of estimated active coronavirus cases across Mexico has exceeded 100,000 for the first time since August as the fourth wave of infections continues to gain momentum.
Active infections rose to 103,806 on Thursday, according to Health Ministry estimates, a 29% increase compared to Wednesday.
There were fewer than 35,000 estimated active cases on December 30, meaning that current infections have practically tripled in the space of a week.
There is little doubt that the highly contagious omicron strain is behind the surge in case numbers, although confirmed cases of that variant only number in the hundreds.
The number of new COVID cases reported by the Health Ministry has increased every day this week, hitting 25,821 on Thursday – a figure just 3,000 below Mexico’s single-day record, recorded during last year’s delta-fueled third wave.
The accumulated case tally now stands at 4.05 million, while the official COVID-19 death toll – considered a significant undercount – is just shy of 300,000 and will likely pass that grim milestone when the Health Ministry publishes its daily COVID report on Friday evening.
The office of President López Obrador said in a Twitter post Friday that the arrival of the omicron variant has caused an increase in case numbers but not in hospitalizations and deaths.
“… Only 19% of general [hospital] beds and 12% with ventilators are occupied. … The vaccine saves lives,” it said.
More than 82.1 million Mexicans have received at least one shot, the Health Ministry said Friday, and 90% of that number are fully vaccinated.
About two-thirds of Mexico’s total population of approximately 126 million people is vaccinated and just under 60% is fully vaccinated.
In other COVID-19 news:
• About one-quarter of the 100,000+ active cases – approximately 27,000 – are in Mexico City but Baja California Sur easily has the highest number on a per capita basis with close to 800 per 100,000 people.
• At a municipal level, the Baja California Sur capital, La Paz, has the highest number of active cases with just under 4,000.
The Mexico City boroughs of Gustavo A. Madero, Álvaro Obregón and Iztapalapa rank second to fourth with more than 3,000 active cases each.
Rounding out the top 10 are Benito Juárez (Cancún), Quintana Roo; San Luis Potosí city; Mérida, Yucatán; Cuauhtémoc, Mexico City; Chihuahua city; and Tlalpan, Mexico City.
• Aeroméxico canceled at least 43 flights out of Mexico City on Friday due to staff shortages. Flights to Guadalajara, Mérida, Ciudad Juárez, Monterrey, Tijuana and Cancún were among those canceled.
At least 83 Aeroméxico pilots have recently been infected with the virus. The airline canceled 22 flights on Thursday.
“The delay or cancellation of flights is not a decision we take lightly and it is always the last resort,” Aeroméxico said in a statement. “… We invite our customers to remain attentive to the status of their flight through our official channels.”
• Health regulator Cofepris has granted emergency use authorization to the COVID-19 antiviral pill made by United States pharmaceutical company Merck, President López Obrador announced Friday. He said that Cofepris was expected to approve Pfizer’s antiviral pill soon. AMLO said he would make both pills available in public hospitals.
Mexican actress Zamia Fandiño as the legendary Llorona.
La Llorona – the ghostly “weeping woman” of Mexican folklore who drowned her own children — is the protagonist of a new feature film that premieres in cinemas in some foreign countries Friday and will screen in Mexico later this year.
The Legend of La Llorona is a Canadian and Mexican co-production directed by award-winning Canadian director Patricia Harris Seeley and starring Autumn Reeser, Antonio Cupo, Danny Trejo and Mexican actress Zamia Fandiño, who plays the dual, interconnected roles of María, a young mother who loses her children, and La Llorona.
“While vacationing in Mexico, a young couple and their son learn about the legend of La Llorona, the evil spirit of a distraught mother who lurks near the water’s edge, striking fear in the hearts of all who see her,” says a synopsis by the company Gracenote.
“La Llorona torments the family mercilessly, snatching the boy and trapping him in a netherworld between the living and the dead. With help from a taxi driver, the couple race against time to save their only child from an unspeakable evil that continues to gain strength and power.”
In an interview with the newspaper Milenio, Fandiño said the character of María undergoes a “brutal, even physical metamorphosis” to become La Llorona.
The Legend of La Llorona Trailer #1 (2022) | Movieclips Indie
The trailer for the new Mexican-Canadian film, The Legend of La Llorona.
“… The loss [of a loved one] is difficult and … even worse when it’s of one’s children,” she said. “It’s something unnatural, it must be the greatest pain,” said the actress who has appeared in Mexicans films such as Cantinflas and Suave patria.
Fandiño said the fact that foreigners are interested in Mexico’s traditions and legends is proof that they are “rich” and representative of an “expansive” culture.
The Legend of La Llorona, Harris’ debut feature, premieres Friday in countries including the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom and will reach cinema screens in Mexico in late February or early March.
The rerouting of the train will require the purchase of new land, much of it owned by willing sellers, Fonatur Director Rogelio Jiménez Pons said. Fonatur
The federal government will spend about 1 billion pesos (US $49 million) to buy land to reroute the Maya Train railroad between Playa del Carmen and Tulum, according to an estimate by the director of the National Tourism Promotion Fund (Fonatur).
President López Obrador announced Wednesday that the route would be modified in the Riviera Maya region of Quintana Roo.
Construction of tracks between the northbound and southbound lanes of Federal Highway 307 began last month despite opposition from hoteliers and members of the broader business community, who argued that the railroad would have an adverse impact on the highway and the vehicles that use it, especially as it was being built.
Fonatur chief Rogelio Jiménez Pons, whose agency is managing the project, said in interviews with the newspaper Reforma and Milenio Television that the Playa del Carmen-Tulum section of the railroad would now be built on the western, or inland, side of the highway, meaning that it will be farther away from beachfront hotels.
He said the government intends to purchase properties along a 43-kilometer stretch of land between the two coastal destinations. A lot of the properties required for the new right of way are owned by hoteliers who have expressed their support for the rerouting of the railroad and are willing to sell, Jiménez said.
The planned route of the Maya Train. Fonatur
While purchasing the land will cost around 1 billion pesos, the rerouting will generate savings of up to 5 billion pesos because fewer complementary projects will be required, he said.
“We will no longer have to go around moving [utility] poles … or replacing roads,” Jiménez said, adding that such work would have affected the flow of traffic on Highway 307.
The tracks, which will run at ground level apart from one elevated section in Playa del Carmen, will be far from hotels that overlook the Caribbean Sea, he stressed. “And that’s what the hoteliers want,” the Fonatur director told Reforma.
“… We reached a good consensus with the hoteliers,” Jiménez said in a separate interview with Milenio Television. “This situation obviously suits them, and it suits us as well because we’ll save on complementary work.”
He said the US $8-billion, 1,500-kilometer railroad — which will have more than 30 stations in Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán, Quintana Roo and Chiapas — is already 30% complete and on track to begin operations at the end of 2023.
Students Xochil Vandroogenbroeck, left, and Xela Lloyd initiated a recyclables collection program in their community in Zapopan, Jalisco.
I live in Pinar de la Venta, a rural community in the municipality of Zapopan, Jalisco, that’s perched on a mountaintop not far from Guadalajara, Jalisco. Not long ago, in our local WhatsApp chat, I began to see notices every two weeks, inviting people to collect and contribute their recyclables.
The posts came from two young women living in my neighborhood named Xela Lloyd and Xochil Vandroogenbroeck, both of them students. I asked them why they had decided to start this project instead of spending all day with their noses in a smartphone, like so many other young moderns.
“It all began,” Lloyd said, “when we would drive through these streets and see what sort of things people were throwing out to be picked up by the trash collectors.”
They both realized that most of what was out there was recyclable.
“We kept seeing people in the [WhatsApp] chat complain that we should be recycling here, but all they did was talk about it,” Vandroogenbroeck said. “They never took the initiative. Finally, we got tired of all that complaining, so we decided to go ahead and do something ourselves. That’s how it all started!”
Making sure only recyclables are collected.
I asked them how they had arranged for somebody to come far from town to our mile-high community to pick things up twice a month.
“Bueno,” Lloyd said, “in our homes, we used to separate and accumulate our recyclable items like glass, paper and plastics, and then we would take everything to one of several pickup points in Guadalajara. So we called the people who were running that project and asked them if they wouldn’t mind including our community as one of those pickup points, because it is such a long drive from here into the city.”
The young women got the Jalisco project, which is these days called CreSer ConCiencia (Raise Awareness with Science) to agree on a time and place, and they now come by every 15 days.
Every other Sunday, Lloyd and Vandroogenbroeck put a reminder on the chat and go to meet the people bringing things to be recycled.
“Somebody always appears,” they told me, “and usually they have lots of questions about what’s recyclable and what’s not. Some of them have rather funny ideas about recycling. For example, somebody showed up with a shoe … not a pair, just one shoe! And one day, a group of people showed up with a sofa … but they were walking, carrying it!”
I went down to the meeting point to see for myself. At the appointed spot, there was a flatbed truck and two young men, Juan and Santiago Quezada. After I asked Juan how long he has been collecting materials for recycling he looked surprised at the question. “Since I was eight years old,” he replied.
Members of the Pinar de la Venta community arrive with their recyclables.
Because I had asked to meet her, the organizer of CreSer ConCiencia, Louisette Chacón, was also at the collection point. I asked her where her interest in recycling had been born.
“I have four children,” Chacón told me. “When they were in elementary school, I joined a reading group started by some of the mothers … and that’s how I first heard about ecology, recycling and … Greenpeace.”
At these meetings, Chacón would learn what Greenpeace was doing and then pass it on to the group and to the kids.
“After a while, I joined Greenpeace and ended up going on four trips with them on the Rainbow Warrior III and other boats. So, caring for our environment has always been important for me, and for some time I was thinking about a good project for me to work on, and I decided I need to focus on education, in particular educating kids.”
“But at first, we are starting with schools. To get the ball rolling, we set up a system by which the general public could donate their recyclable trash, but my final goal is to hold workshops in schools,” Chacón said. “Due to COVID, we’re not collecting as much as we’d like, and we often have to take money out of our own pockets to keep things going, to pay salaries and gasoline and things like signs and publications.”
Louisette Chacón uses proceeds from the recycling project to fund CreSer ConCiencia’s educational programs.
I asked her what some of the objects they collect look like once they have been recycled.
“Take these Tetra Pak juice and milk cartons,” she said. “Tetra Paks are 100% recyclable: they consist of 75% cardboard, 20% polyethylene and 5% aluminum. So all of these can be recycled. From old Tetra Paks, we get flooring and roofing material. You can even make houses out of this material!”
Chacón then showed me a plastic bottle full of cigarette butts.
“We are also ambassadors of Eco Filter México,” she said. “This is a company right here in Guadalajara that is using a fungus-based biotechnological process that they patented, that degrades 25% and detoxifies 100% of cigarette butts. Colillas, as we call them in Spanish, contain very toxic residues, so when they are tossed into water or thrown on the ground, they contaminate the environment.
“Just one butt can contain up to 200 toxic substances, some of them carcinogens … and would you believe it? They take 15 years to decompose. So we encourage people to put cigarette butts into a plastic bottle which they can give to us once it’s full. We will then pass them on to Eco Filter.”
Chacón explained that Eco Filter’s plant is located behind the Guadalajara airport. They break up the filters and mix them with this fungus they discovered in Michoacán.
In 2021, volunteers collected 2.6 tonnes of cigarette butts to be processed by Eco Filter Mexico.
After 20 days or so, the fungus decontaminates the filter. Then the material is dried and powdered, and out of it, they make things like paper and flowerpots. Last year, they processed more than six million colillas!”
Chacón also told me that recyclers are doing some amazing things with bottles made of PET, a polymer in the polyester family. Let me mention just one example.
Oceanness is a company in Oslo, Norway, that collects plastic bottles from ocean coastlines and turns them into T-shirts. In a video clip on Oceanness’ website, company CEO Gaute Hellerslia explains that it takes seven plastic bottles to create one shirt.
Those bottles, he says, are “clinically washed, Monica-from-Friends-style,” then shredded to flakes, which are melted into tiny pellets that in turn are extruded and spun into soft yarn and finally woven into cloth.
Then Gaute casually adds, “I have a pretty disturbing fact for you: 60% of all clothing today is actually plastic made from oil. The fashion business is the second most polluting industry in the world. Check the label on the clothes you are wearing. If it says they’re made of polyester, your clothes come from oil.”
The clip ends with a small notice: “Since you started watching this video, 734,000 plastic bottles have been dumped in our oceans.”
The pickup team and the organizers standing by to receive recyclable items in Pinar de la Venta.
I thank young people like Lloyd and Vandroogenbroeck, not only for calling my attention to problems I should be thinking more about but also for actually taking a hand in doing something about them.
The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, since 1985. His most recent book is Outdoors in Western Mexico, Volume Three. More of his writing can be found on his blog.
Oceanness CEO Gaute Hellerslia wearing a T-shirt made from seven recycled PET plastic bottles.
A pen made from recycled Tetra Pak containers.
Chairs and desks made entirely of used food cartons collected by students at a school in Mumbai, India.
Fishermen in Guerrero have accused the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) of killing approximately 150 tonnes of sardines.
The state-owned electricity utility operates a power plant in Petacalco, a town just south of Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán, in the municipality of La Unión de Isidoro Montes de Oca, part of Guerrero’s Costa Grande region.
Petacalco fisherman say the plant is responsible for the death of the sardines because it has dumped chemicals in a canal connected to the Pacific Ocean.
Jesús Campos, leader of a local fishing cooperative, told the newspaper Reforma that the CFE also uses the canal to cool down machinery. Its alleged misuse of the canal has previously caused the death of other marine species, including turtles.
Campos estimated that 150 tonnes of sardines have perished, leaving a stench of dead fish on the beach. He said the CFE hasn’t spoken to fishermen about the massive die-off. The latter have reported the “ecocide” to state and federal authorities and demanded immediate action.
The fishermen say the death of the sardines will affect their ability to work because they use the small fish as bait. Campos said that fishermen have been complaining about the CFE plant for years “but nothing happens.”
“What more does the government want in order to demand that the CFE stop killing us and stop killing nature?” he asked.
Campos said it could take years for the sardine population to recover. The fisherman called on the CFE to send workers to the beach to remove the dead fish, “which are going to start to rot and smell horrible.”
An acclaimed spoken word artist who condemned the federal government for failing to pay him for his participation in a Culture Ministry program died in Colima on Wednesday.
Víctor Chi, considered one of the greatest ever narrators of the history and culture of Colima, passed away in an IMSS hospital of an unspecified illness.
The artist, also known as Pitor Chi, said in a December 27 Facebook post that he was ending the year “almost blind, almost deaf and almost unable to walk.”
In the same post he criticized President López Obrador and Culture Minister Alejandra Frausto for the government’s failure to compensate him for his participation in the 2021 edition of a program called Alas y Raíces (Wings and Roots), which provides cultural education and entertainment for children and adolescents.
Chi was selected to participate in the program last March and presented his show “Legends and Mysteries of the People of Colima” around the country.
Víctor Chi in his hospital bed before he died. He claimed that he and other participants in a Culture Ministry program had been waiting nine months to be paid.
The storyteller, who was originally from Yucatán but spent decades living in Colima, also criticized the government in a December 30 Facebook post.
Not without irony, Chi wrote: “Thanks to the blessed and great progressive transformation of this country a lot of artists, cultural promoters, managers and creators are ending the year and starting 2022 … mired in anxiety, uncertainty, debt and misery.”
“Thank you to the cultural authorities of this country, thank you to local authorities, thank you for failing to pay, for the lack of punctuality, for the discrimination and non-existent support, thank you Frausto, thank you Obrador, … thank you for destroying our mental and physical health. Hopefully you’re having a very nice time. … Meanwhile, we’ll resist until the last breath.”
Chi, who was also an activist, reading advocate and defender of native corn, included a photo of himself in his hospital bed in the post.
In another Facebook post earlier in December, he said that nobody had provided an explanation as to why he and other participants in the Culture Ministry program hadn’t been paid nine months after they were selected to contribute to it. No one in the government has the “balls to tell us we won’t be paid,” Chi added.
“It’s a sad thing, it’s the worst six-year period of government for the arts, artists and culture in Mexico,” he wrote. “… We’re not begging, we’re demanding what we’re owed due to our own efforts and dignified work.”
Members of Mexico’s creative and cultural community lamented Chi’s death and expressed their condemnation of the government’s failure to pay him. They also criticized the Alas y Raíces program for publishing a statement mourning his passing.
“… When will they understand … that … #WeDon’tLiveOnApplause,” Claudia Zarate, another spoken word artist, wrote on social media.
“Nine months without a salary! Nine months with the anxiety of not knowing what he will take to the [dining room] table to feed his family, and not because he hasn’t worked. On the contrary, he was a tireless and committed promoter of culture. … There are no words that can transmit the pain of a loss like this thanks to bureaucracy and negligence,” said Elena Ortiz, a writer.
The newspaper Reforma said that Chi’s case is “emblematic of a situation of generalized job insecurity faced by cultural [sector] workers” that has long plagued Mexico and has not improved since the current government took office in 2018.
Such workers have banded together in collectives to protest lack of payment by organizations such as the National Institute of Fine Arts and the National Institute of Anthropology and History.
Some 4,000 people who participated in the Alas y Raíces program in 2019 also faced difficulties getting the money the Culture Ministry had agreed to pay them. The government, however, hasn’t taken steps to eliminate such problems, Reforma reported.
“I never thought we [artists] could be worse off,” Chi said in one Facebook post published late last month. “But … we are.”
A transmission electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, isolated from a patient in the U.S. Virus particles are shown emerging from the surface of cells. The spikes on the outer edge of the virus particles give coronaviruses their name, which means crown-like. Rocky Mountain Laboratories/NIAID
Mexico recorded its highest single-day tally of new coronavirus cases since late August on Wednesday, while the official COVID-19 death toll approached 300,000.
The Health Ministry reported 20,626 new cases, elevating the accumulated tally to just under 4.03 million. An additional 94 COVID-related fatalities lifted the death toll to 299,805.
Only four countries – the United States, Brazil, India and Russia – have recorded more pandemic deaths than Mexico.
Mexico’s fatality rate is 7.4 per 100 confirmed cases, the highest among the 20 countries currently most affected by COVID, according to data compiled by John Hopkins University. Its mortality rate is 235 per 100,000 people, the 25th highest in the world. Peru ranks first with 624 COVID deaths per 100,000 people followed by Bulgaria (449) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (410).
Mexico’s estimated active case tally rose to 80,510 on Wednesday, a 31% increase compared to Tuesday. Baja California Sur remains the country’s COVID epicenter with almost 700 active cases per 100,000 people. That’s more than triple the per capita rate in Mexico City, which ranks second for current infections with just over 200 per 100,000 residents.
Quintana Roo ranks third with about 200 active cases per 100,000 people. No other state has more than 100.
In other COVID-19 news:
• Baja California has become the first state to make presenting a vaccination certificate compulsory for customers who wish to enter establishments such as bars, restaurants and nightclubs. The new rule, which will be policed by the State Commission for Protection against Health Risks, took effect Wednesday.
The same rule entered into force in the municipality of Culiacán, Sinaloa, on Tuesday.
• Despite the national increase in case numbers as the highly contagious omicron strain continues to spread, residents of Acapulco, Guerrero, have fewer rather than more options when it comes to getting tested. Two public testing stations where people were formerly able to get tested free of charge are no longer in operation after being dismantled last month, the newspaper Reforma reported.
It is unclear whether they will be set up again. Acapulco currently has 192 active cases, according to the Guerrero government, more than any other municipality in the state.
• The Mazatlán International Carnival will not go ahead in late February and early March if coronavirus case numbers are high at that time, said Sinaloa Health Minister Héctor Cuén.
He told a press conference that the Sinaloa General Health Council has the authority to cancel the annual event – a week of nonstop festivities – if it deems it to be a public health risk. “We put the health of sinaloenses first,” Cuén said.
• Gaining access to a COVID-19 test in the public health system is becoming more difficult as demand increases, but another option for people who want or need to get tested is private labs. Visitors to Mexico who require a negative test result to return home can get tested at such labs, while testing services are also available at the country’s major airports.
Aeroméxico has an alliance with certain laboratories with exclusive benefits for people with bookings on that airline and Delta Air. More details about the alliance, and private lab testing locations in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey and Cancún, are available on the Aeroméxico website.
Some states include positive test results from private lab tests in their coronavirus case data but the federal government – to Mexico News Daily’s best knowledge – does not, meaning that infections are significantly underreported.
The vehicle in which the bodies were found is loaded aboard a truck for removal.
The Zacatecas governor got an unwanted present for Kings Day: a vehicle with 10 dead bodies abandoned beneath the giant Christmas tree in front of the state government palace in the early hours of the morning.
Governor David Monreal Ávila appeared in a Facebook Live video around 7 a.m. to inform the public of the incident. He said the silver Mazda SUV entered the Plaza de Armas around 5:15 a.m. and was abandoned minutes later. The driver took off running and escaped behind the Basilica Cathedral of Zacatecas, he said.
Authorities initially believed it to be a car accident, before finding the pile of bodies inside the vehicle. The Attorney General’s Office arranged for the vehicle to be towed, and the army and National Guard cordoned off the area for about an hour. Within two hours of the incident, the vehicle had been cleared and authorities vacated the area.
Monreal announced in a video Thursday afternoon that those responsible for the incident had been arrested, but didn’t specify how many people had been detained or any further details.
Initial reports indicated that there were six bodies in the vehicle, but the Security and Citizen Protection Ministry (SSPC) later clarified that there were, in fact, 10 cadavers.
The incident, presumably orchestrated by organized crime, comes after the federal government’s November announcement of the deployment of additional troops to the area as part of a new security plan. The state faces high levels of violence and has been the site of a turf war between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) since mid-2020.
A number of bodies have been left hanging from bridges and highway overpasses in recent months, a highly visible message that organized crime groups are active in the state.
Banda El Recodo performed at a rodeo in the Belisario Arteaga bullring in Chilpancingo.
The coronavirus has had no shortage of recent opportunities to spread in Chilpancingo, Guerrero.
The annual San Mateo Fair started in mid-December, meaning that there have been a plethora of public events in the state capital.
After more than two weeks of concerts, dance processions and other events, Chilpancingo played host to a rodeo at the Belisario Arteaga bullring on Tuesday.
Some 13,000 people filled the arena, where mask wearing was lackadaisical and social distancing impossible. The band El Recodo added to the festive, carefree mood, playing for almost four hours while bull riders tried to stay on their bucking animals.
The San Mateo Fair, which concludes this weekend, was given the green light to go ahead on the proviso that virus mitigation measures would be enforced and attendees would show their COVID-19 vaccination certificates or otherwise agree to a rapid test prior to entry to the various events.
But attendees at the Tuesday night rodeo didn’t have to comply with any of those requirements, the newspaper El Universal reported.
Despite the partying in Chilpancingo, and the recent increase in national coronavirus case numbers, COVID has not (yet) become a major problem in Guerrero, at least according to official data. The state, which also includes tourism hotspots Acapulco and Zihuatanejo/Ixtapa, currently has 440 active cases, the Guerrero Health Ministry reported Wednesday.
Only 63 of those are in Chilpancingo, while 192 – 44% of the total – are in Acapulco. According to federal data, Guerrero has the sixth least number of cases on a per capita basis among the 32 states. Only Chiapas, Veracruz, Michoacán, Tlaxcala and Oaxaca have fewer cases per 100,000 people.
Alessandro and his Kings Day gifts for children who might want a toy.
Kings Day is the traditional day for giving gifts in Mexico and many children look forward to receiving them. But an 8-year-old Oaxaca boy took the spirit of giving to a whole new level on Thursday.
Alessandro Vendrell of Oaxaca city set up a table full of toys outside his home and posted a sign: “I’ll give you a toy if you need it. Take one.”
More than three dozen toys, from cars and tractors to superheroes and — well, even more cars covered the table.
The photo appeared in a post on the Facebook page of the Oaxaca newspaper Central Q Noticias and generated more than 100 complimentary comments and 500 shares in just a few hours.
“My respects,” said one commenter. “This indeed is the true future of Mexico.”
