Juan Manuel Vidales with the Chevrolet pickup he raffled to raise money for his cancer treatment.
A Tabasco man who raffled off his beloved pickup truck to fund his cancer treatment was brought to tears after the winner returned the vehicle to him.
Juan Manuel Vidales, a 47-year-old resident of Huimanguillo, has stomach cancer and was struggling to pay for his treatment when he decided to raffle off his 2000 model Chevrolet pickup, which he bought last year and painstakingly restored over a period of eight months.
His daughter and sister helped him organize the raffle and, with the help of social media and word of mouth, they ended up selling a good number of tickets for 199 pesos (about US $10) each.
The ticket buyers were not just from Huimanguillo, a Tabasco municipality that borders Veracruz and Chiapas, but also Mexico’s north and even the United States, the newspaper El País reported. In addition to the pickup, two cash prizes of 20,000 and 10,000 pesos were also up for grabs.
The family of Marco Rodríguez, a Huimanguillo man, snapped up some 35 tickets and on Christmas Eve his youngest son found out he was the winner of the Chevrolet.
🔥Hombre rifa su camioneta para pagar su operación y el ganador se la devuelve😱🔥👏🏼
Sixteen-year-old Marco Polo and his father had already decided that if they won they would not keep the prize but rather return it to Vidales, a cell phone repairman who had to give up his job due to his cancer diagnosis.
A video filmed in Vidales’ garage shows him announcing Marco Polo as the winner and handing over the vehicle’s papers to him.
“I’m very happy to be alive to [be able to] hand over this prize,” said the stage 4 cancer sufferer, who was given just two months to live in June.
Just one minute after he received the vehicle’s papers, Marco Polo handed them back to Vidales and told him that he was returning the prize. Vidales immediately started crying before thanking the youth and his father for their generosity.
The video, whose target audience was people who bought tickets in the raffle, has gone viral on social media.
Vidales told El País in a telephone interview that he was overcome with joy when he saw that Marco Polo was “so happy, so satisfied” with his decision to give him the pickup as a “Christmas present.” Many other young people would have kept the prize, he said.
Vidales said he had no plans to sell his pickup and that he now considered it his lucky charm. Selling the vehicle would be a last resort, he added.
Vidales has several chemotherapy sessions ahead of him in a Villahermosa hospital and there is a possibility that doctors will remove a tumor from his stomach, if such surgery is deemed viable.
“It depends on how [the tumor] behaves, cancer is very strange,” he said. “I want to keep living. That’s why I’m fighting.”
Supreme Court Justice Margarita Ríos-Farjat was one of those concerned that postponing the referendum would undermine citizens' democratic rights.
The Supreme Court (SCJN) has ruled that a referendum on President López Obrador’s leadership must be held in April, thwarting the postponement of the vote by the National Electoral Institute (INE) on the grounds that it doesn’t have sufficient funds to organize it.
INE councilors voted earlier this month to indefinitely postpone the so-called “revocation of mandate” referendum in which citizens would have the opportunity to vote in favor or against the president completing his six-year term.
The president’s office challenged the decision and the SCJN ruled in its favor. Court sources told the newspaper Milenio that justices were concerned that the postponement of the referendum would undermine citizens’ democratic rights.
The Federal Electoral Tribunal (TEPJF) also ruled against the INE’s postponement of the referendum, determining that a lack of resources did not justify delaying the vote. The TEPJF ordered the INE to adjust its budget in order to stage the referendum in April but also acknowledged that the Finance Ministry has an obligation to ensure it has the money it requires.
The SCJN ordered the INE to continue preparing for a vote on April 10. Nevertheless, López Obrador – an enthusiastic poll observer who is determined to have his high approval rating confirmed at a vote – indicated Wednesday that his government was preparing for the possibility that the INE won’t organize the referendum.
One option is for ordinary citizens to stage the vote, he said. “The citizens could do the consultation, the people could organize it themselves. We won the [2018 presidential election] because of the people, … that’s the essence of democracy – the citizen who wants to exercise his rights, who participates, who seeks change,” López Obrador said.
A second option, he said, would be to have “prestigious” polling companies organize the referendum. In such a case, citizens could even express their opinions over the telephone or online, he said.
“It wouldn’t take much time … you’d have the result and it would be announced,” AMLO quipped.
Despite having a plan B and C, he expressed confidence that the INE would comply with the order to organize the vote.
“They [the INE councilors] made a mistake [in postponing the referendum] and they have to recognize it because they opposed a constitutional mandate and acted in an anti-democratic way. But in politics you have to know how to put things right,” López Obrador said.
The president announced earlier this week that 10 million signatures of support for the referendum had been collected, a figure several times higher than the number needed for the vote to go ahead. However, only 1.3 million of those signatures had been verified as of Wednesday.
A collective delivers signatures in support of the “revocation of mandate” referendum.
On Thursday, AMLO reveled in the TEPJF’s decision, asserting that it was now clear that the referendum would go ahead. He said the Finance Ministry could provide additional funds for the vote as long as government programs weren’t adversely affected.
However, the INE must first determine the cost of the referendum and rearrange its budget to cover as much of it as it can, López Obrador said. He urged the electoral authority to reduce spending on travel, the purchase and rent of vehicles and councilors’ salaries.
Additional funding for the INE, whose budget was recently slashed by almost 5 billion pesos (US $243.7 million), cannot come at the expense of government programs because “we have to keep helping those who need” our support, the president said.
He sought to downplay the TEPJF’s directive for the Finance Ministry to ensure adequate funding for the referendum, asserting that “the important thing is that the consultation will go ahead.”
“… We must all participate,” he declared, adding that the vote would set a precedent that would allow future presidents to be forced out of office before their term ends.
If a president “behaves well,” he or she should be supported but if a president “behaves poorly,” he or she should leave office early, he said.
A flyer advertising the “revocation of mandate” referendum.
AMLO wasn’t the only person angered by the INE’s decision to postpone the referendum. Lawmakers with the ruling Morena party – which was founded by López Obrador last decade and is now Mexico’s dominant political force – also took umbrage.
The lower house of Congress, in which Morena and its allies have a majority, considered filing a criminal complaint against the INE councilors but ultimately decided against it. The Chamber of Deputies said on its official social media accounts Wednesday that its president, Morena Deputy Sergio Gutiérrez Luna, had taken all views into account before deciding not to proceed with the complaint.
INE councilor Ciro Murayama said on Twitter that the Chamber of Deputies’ decision to not pursue criminal charges against the councilors was “just as well.”
He charged that the decision was “strictly political” because it came after “broad public condemnation” of the idea that the councilors could face criminal charges for postponing the referendum.
Opposition parties oppose the vote and have accused the president of using it as a promotional tool, while many opposition politicians supported the INE’s decision to postpone it.
The National Action Party, the largest opposition force, has called the referendum “a very expensive and unconstitutional piece of political theater.”
But López Obrador – who claims to possess total faith in the people – holds the exercise up as the epitome of participatory democracy, of which he is a staunch supporter, especially when he is confident that the will of citizens will coincide with his own.
Residents met with state and federal authorities Sunday to request help from authorities, but the agents who arrived attacked members of a self-defense group.
The residents of indigenous communities in Guerrero expelled federal security agents they’d called for help on Wednesday after the latter assaulted and disarmed a regional community police force.
Residents from communities near Chilapa, about 65 kilometers east of Chilpancingo, had met with state and federal authorities three days earlier to discuss the December 19 murders of two men and two women, who were all indigenous.
One of the demands at the meeting was for security forces to disarm a criminal gang called Los Ardillos, who are accused of at least eight killings in indigenous towns since 2018.
People from the communities called for assistance on Monday from the army, the National Guard and the state Attorney General’s Office after gang members entered the towns.
However, when the agents arrived at the village of Xolotepec, instead of looking for members of Los Ardillos, they disarmed and attacked community police officers from the regional CRAC-PF force who were stationed at a highway checkpoint which was installed weeks earlier to defend the communities.
Angered by the actions of the security forces, the locals expelled soldiers, National Guardsmen and ministerial police officers.
The CRAC-PF’s political arm, the Emiliano Zapata Indigenous and Popular Council of Guerrero, said security forces would be detained if they tried to disarm community police again.”Faced with these arbitrary actions, the inhabitants of these three communities … expelled the federal and state forces from the area with the warning that if they come to carry out actions like these against the community police, they will be held by the population,” it said in a statement.
The Zuiderdam was permitted to berth in Sonora but Sinaloa authorities said they would not allow it to land.
Cruise ships that request to dock at Mexican ports will be allowed to do so even if people on board have COVID-19, the federal government said Tuesday.
The announcement came after Jalisco authorities recently blocked two ships from docking on that state’s coast.
“The ministries of Health and Tourism of the Mexican government reiterate their commitment to respect what is established in the International Health Regulations of the World Health Organization (WHO), and consequently cruise ships will be welcomed in the country’s maritime ports,” the ministries said in a joint statement.
They said that people with symptomatic COVID-19 or who have tested positive for the disease will be given medical care if required.
People who have tested positive but have mild or no symptoms will be required to remain in “preventative quarantine” while the ship on which they are traveling is docked, the ministries said, while those with serious symptoms will be taken to hospital.
Passengers without COVID can proceed with their onshore tourism activities as long as they follow virus mitigation protocols, the statement said.
“… Our country upholds its policy of solidarity and fraternity as well as the principle of non-discrimination toward all people,” the ministries said.
They said that a cruise ship that wasn’t allowed to dock in Puerto Vallarta would be welcomed in Guaymas, Sonora, “with the support of the government of that state.”
The ship, the MS Zuiderdam, docked in Guaymas on Tuesday. Sonora Health Minister José Luis Alomía said that 28 crew members and two passengers had COVID and were isolating in their cabins. About 400 passengers who disembarked were subjected to temperature checks and some were given rapid antigen tests.
Alomía said that no additional COVID cases were detected and the passengers who left the ship didn’t pose a risk to the community. The Zuiderdam, which left San Diego on December 23, had previously docked in Cabo San Lucas, La Paz and Loreto.
Meanwhile, Sinaloa Health Minister Héctor Melesio Cuén Ojeda said Tuesday that two cruise ships slated to dock on that state’s coast wouldn’t be allowed to do so because they were carrying people infected with the coronavirus. One of those ships is the Zuiderdam, which was scheduled to dock in Topolobampo on Wednesday.
The other is the Carnival Panorama, which was due to dock in Mazatlán on Tuesday but has at least 81 infected crew members and passengers on board. It was also previously prevented from docking in Puerto Vallarta.
Cuén said the decision to block the arrival of the ships came after Governor Rubén Rocha advised him to put residents’ health ahead of tourism and followed a virtual discussion with representatives of the cruise lines on Monday. He stressed that COVID-free ships are welcome to dock on the state’s coast.
The health minister also announced plans to conduct random COVID-19 tests on international air passengers arriving in Sinaloa airports.
“It’s very important to mention that the prevention protocol for this new variant omicron is exactly the same as that for the delta variant,” Cuén added.
“Using a face mask is very important whether you’re vaccinated or not because we have to remember that the vaccine doesn’t protect us 100%,” he said.
Manzanillo is a key shipping destination for imports from China and the Pacific
The port of Manzanillo in Colima is set to benefit from a US $30 million investment from one of its operators.
SSA México plans to invest in eight new cranes for its container shipping terminal.
The company said that both the ports of Manzanillo and Lázaro Cárdenas, in the neighboring state of Michoacán, had a fruitful year.
It added that the traffic at its Manzanillo terminal had increased 10% in annual terms. It accounted for 30% of all traffic handled at Pacific ports in 2021.
SSA México also plans to invest in the cruise industry by making infrastructural improvements to the ports of Cozumel, Quintana Roo, and Puerto Progreso, Yucatán, the newspaper El Economista reported.
The port of Manzanillo is Mexico’s biggest, according to the shipping website icontainers. It acts as a point of entry on the Pacific Ocean for freight from the United States and Asia and its principal exports are beer, sugar, copper, steel pipes, coal and resins.
SSA México is owned by Carrix, which is headquartered in Seattle.
Publicity still from the Netflix docuseries Reasonable Doubt.
A new Netflix docuseries examining corruption in the Mexican justice system has exposed its entrenched use of torture and the negligence of authorities.
The four-part Reasonable Doubt: A Tale of Two Kidnappings, created, written and directed by Roberto Hernández, investigates a murky legal case in Tabasco that began in 2015.
Hernández’s research involved interviewing hundreds of prison inmates, most of whom claimed they had been beaten up, burned with cigarettes or tortured by waterboarding, suffocation or electric shock.
Confessions were long considered decisive evidence in the Mexican justice system, despite the reality of pretrial abuses and the absenteeism of judges, the streaming news website Decider reported.
The true story depicted in the series begins with a minor traffic accident that results in one man being accused of kidnapping.
Darwin Morales, Juan Luís López, Gonzalo García and Héctor Muñoz were convicted for crimes they did not commit.
Another three men, all strangers to each other, are arrested for the kidnapping. The four men — Hector Muñoz, Gonzalo García, Juan Luis López and Darwin Morales — are all sentenced to 50 years behind bars for crimes they claim they never committed.
Only Morales has been released from prison, but he has received no compensation for his time in detention.
The convicted men make claims of torture in the trailer for the series. “My stomach area was really bruised … they wanted us to take the blame,” one of the men said.
“Mexico has a clear and logical rule: the defense only needs to prove there is reasonable doubt. In spite of that, courts operate under the presumption of guilt,” a narrator says in the trailer.
“Our justice system, instead of dispensing justice, managed to transform a minor traffic incident into a 50-year prison sentence, and I think that is terrifying as a result,” Hernández says in the show’s opening.
“It is a case chosen at random, and it made me realize that there were a sea of cases like that of Héctor, Gonzalo, Darwin and Juan. When I entered the Macuspana [Tabasco] prison in 2016 … we noticed that a lot of atrocities had been committed with practically all the people we interviewed,” Hernández said in a recent interview.
Duda razonable | Tráiler oficial | Netflix
The Spanish-language trailer to “Reasonable Doubt” on Netflix.
Terra News Service report from this month announcing Cold Front No. 15.
When it comes to the concept of “cold,” although Mexico overall cannot hold a candle to places further north, many parts of the country aren’t always a hot tropical paradise either.
Believe it or not, the record for cold in Mexico is -29 C (-20.2 F), recorded in Los Lamentos, Chihuahua in 1962.
Mexico does experience a definite change in weather starting in the fall. Changes in wind patterns cause the end of the rainy season by November, and most of the country notices a drop in temperature.
Depending on your latitude and altitude, you will get anywhere from a break from oppressive heat to weather that necessitates you putting on a sweater or jacket at night. In a few places, you have to bundle up pretty much like up north.
A couple of places in Mexico are tourist attractions for having north-like winter weather. The Bosques de Monterreal ski resort in Coahuila, called the “Switzerland of Mexico” is one. Temperatures here can dip to -10 C.
An Arctic blast brought a surprise snowstorm to Monclova, Coahuila.
Just west of Mexico City is the Nevado de Toluca mountain in México state. At 4,680 meters above sea level, winter snow is common at its peak. It’s not the only central Mexican mountain to get snow regularly, but this volcano’s high altitudes are accessible by car. It is not unusual in the city of Toluca to see cars showing off mini-snowmen on the roof or trunk as proof of the trip up.
With the exception of communities at the highest altitudes, uncomfortably cold temperatures are restricted to nighttime and the early morning, with daytime temperatures reaching comfortable levels. The coldest weather is restricted to a few weeks around late January.
Houses generally are not insulated and heated like up north, so there really is no escape from outside temperatures inside the house. If you live in an apartment in Mexico City that does not receive direct sunlight, for example, your place can be quite chilly at all times of day.
It’s a far worse problem for poor communities that live at very high altitudes.
Like further north, much of Mexico’s winter weather is driven by the advances and retreats of Arctic high-pressure systems that come down through Canada and the United States. Mexico generally experiences cold fronts on the southern edge of these systems.
Mexico generally gets about 44 such fronts each winter, but 56 are predicted for this year.
The Bosques de Monterreal ski resort is about 45 kilometers from Saltillo, Coahuila.
The southern edge means that such fronts are much shorter and milder than what is experienced in the U.S., but they are tracked carefully by weather agencies and news organizations and even distinguished by numbers throughout the season. They cross into the country mostly in the northeast, where their effects are usually strongest, but central and even parts of southern Mexico are affected by air being pushed south.
Cold fronts usually cause cloud cover and a sudden drop in temperature and can cause snow, ice and freezing rain. Precipitation is more likely in areas closer to the Gulf of Mexico.
Such fronts help make Tabasco Mexico’s rainiest state, with an average of over 2,400 millimeters of rain each year, as cold air masses nearly take direct aim at this state in the crook between Veracruz and the Yucatán Peninsula.
The eastern part of the country is the most affected because these frigid air masses make their greatest advances south just east of the Rocky Mountains. Their north-south orientation here has led them and their common effects to be termed nortes (norths). This is a little confusing.
Mexican weather authorities use nortes to refer to a specific weather phenomenon associated with cold fronts that come between October and February. This phenomenon causes high winds and rough seas in the Gulf of Mexico that disrupt important shipping and oil drilling operations.
They are most common in Tamaulipas and Veracruz but can reach as far as Progreso, Yucatán. But for the average Gulf coast resident, the term has come to mean any drop in temperature and any cloudiness (regardless of wind or precipitation) they experience during this time of year.
Map showing the norte weather pattern. Orange areas indicate high wind speeds.
The instability of weather on most of Mexico’s eastern shoreline is one reason it has been all but ignored by international tourism and foreign residents. It’s not that there is nothing worth seeing on the Gulf coast, but visits here mean keeping an eye on the weather. Of Mexico’s five major resort areas, only one, Cancún, is not on the perpetually sunny Pacific coast, and that is because it is located far enough south to avoid most effects of the nortes.
Despite this, there has been some increase of foreign visitors and residents looking for something different, especially in northern Veracruz. Those not bothered by the changeable weather are rewarded by lush, green rainforests year-round and the ability to avoid throngs of other gringos.
Leigh Thelmadatter arrived in Mexico 18 years ago and fell in love with the land and the culture in particular its handcrafts and art. She is the author of Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta (Schiffer 2019). Her culture column appears regularly on Mexico News Daily.
The coral reef system is one of the most extensive ecosystems in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Veracruz reef system could disappear by 2050 due to industrial pollution, a researcher from the National Autonomous University (UNAM) has warned.
Coral cover on the Veracruz coast has decreased 40% since 1966 due to pollution released into the Jamapa, Papaloapan, Actopan and La Antigua rivers that flow to the coast. Natural resources have been exploited in the area since pre-Hispanic times but the processes were always of lower impact, according to the newspaper Milenio.
The oil, agriculture, construction, fishing and tourism industries in Veracruz have created chemical debris, threatening the existence of the more than 50 reefs that form one of the most extensive ecosystems in the Gulf of Mexico.
Guillermo Horta Puga pointed to the oil industry as the chief culprit. “There are areas of the reef that are highly impacted … there is a good possibility that by 2050, the reefs in Veracruz will disappear because an increase in the levels of baryte has been shown, which is a metal widely used in oil as a drilling fluid,” he said.
Horta Puga added that lead had been left from gasoline used over several years, as had barium and cadmium deposits released by ground movement due to changes in land use in the area. Also, copper and tin had come from paint on boats.
“The studies that have been carried out show that copper and tin are in the macroalgae that replace corals on reefs. With the construction of the city and the port of Veracruz and the latest expansion over five years, the impact has been greater, especially when added to the [impact of] agricultural and industrial activities … that dump waste into the basins and through the rivers that then reach the coastal area,” he said.
The United Nations has warned about the future of reefs. In 2019, it said that 90% of the “super ecosystems” that provide a habitat for 25% of marine species could be extinct by 2050.
Even fruit vendors in the street are targets for extortion. deposit photos
Small business owners, street vendors and others were forced to fork out considerably more in 2021 to meet the extortion demands of criminal groups.
So-called derecho de piso fees increased from 20% to 45% this year, according to business owners in 10 states who spoke with the newspaper Milenio.
The incidence of extortion also rose, according to official data, with reported cases up 11% in the first 11 months of the year compared to the same period of 2020.
Extortionists – members of large criminal organizations such as the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and the Sinaloa Cartel in some cases – are demanding payments from individuals of up to 15,000 pesos (US $730) a month, Milenio reported.
Fresh chicken vendors, proprietors of tienditas (small grocery stores), ambulantes (street vendors), truck drivers and even prostitutes are among those subjected to extortion demands. Larger establishments such as restaurants, bars and casinos are also targeted by criminals, who pressure them to make even larger payments.
México state is the country’s extortion capital with 37% of cases occurring there between January and August. There were more than 2,100 reported cases in the period, an increase of 8% compared to the same period last year.
However, the real number of cases is almost certainly much higher as many victims keep quiet out of fear. State capital Toluca and municipalities in the greater Mexico City metropolitan have been identified as extortion hotspots in Mexico’s most populous entity.
The Sinaloa Cartel, the CJNG, the Gulf Cartel, the Familia Michoacana and a range of other smaller criminal organizations are all believed to be involved in the extortion racket in México state.
Extortion cases also increased this year in Mexico City, where more than 400 – undoubtedly a vast undercount – were reported between January and September.
The owner of a store selling chicken, who started his business less than three months ago, told Milenio that he received a written message demanding a weekly derecho de piso payment.
Ricardo said the note included a telephone number to which he sent a message to confirm he would pay. He chose to yield to the extortionists’ demand rather than suffer the inevitable consequences that non-compliance would bring.
The sign on a shuttered storefront reads, ‘Closed due to insecurity. They are extorting me.’
Another extortion hotspot is Puebla city, where cases spiked at least 20% this year, according to the Puebla Citizens Security and Justice Council, a non-governmental organization. One group of extortionists operating in the historic center of the capital is called Fuerza 2000, Milenio reported.
It charges small businesses 2,000 pesos (about US $100) a month for “security” and street vendors a “voluntary fee” of up to 500 pesos every fortnight, the newspaper said.
Sex workers have also been targeted: one group of Puebla prostitutes reported in October that a man known as “El Viejo Matus” threatened to abduct them, beat them and kill them if they didn’t hand over 300 pesos each every day.
Among the other criminal groups involved in extortion in Puebla city are Los Fedes, Los Rojos and Los Pelones.
Small business owners and street vendors in several other states including Jalisco and Tamaulipas also told Milenio that criminals are demanding higher derecho de piso fees.
In one central neighborhood of Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco, men who introduce themselves as CJNG members demand weekly payments and threaten violence if businesses don’t comply. One man who sells chopped fruit from a tricycle said he pays 1,000 pesos a week to avoid trouble.
Only about 300 extortion cases have been reported in Jalisco this year but, as is the case in other states, the vast majority go unreported. According to the national statistics agency INEGI, some 97% of extortion cases are not taken to authorities, mostly due to victims’ fear of repercussions.
The Mexico City airport has been busy this week with holiday travelers.
Baja California Sur – home to tourism mecca Los Cabos – is now Mexico’s coronavirus epicenter, with approximately 14 times more active cases than the national per capita rate.
The rest of the country will see an increase in case numbers in the near future as end-of-year gatherings and tourism fuel the spread of the highly transmissible omicron variant, experts warn.
According to the latest Health Ministry data, there are 1,888 active cases in Baja California Sur (BCS) for a rate of about 230 infections per 100,000 residents. The national rate is 16.5 active cases per 100,000 people.
The infection rate in BCS is more than four times higher than that in Mexico City, the only other state with more than 50 active cases per 100,000 people. Baja California, Quintana Roo and Aguascalientes rank third to fifth, respectively, for active cases on a per capita basis.
About half of BCS’s active cases are in the municipality of Los Cabos, located on the state’s southern tip, while most of the others are in La Paz, the state capital.
Governor Víctor Castro attributed the spike in case numbers – the largest since the summer – to the influx of tourists, many of whom are from the United States, where the highly mutated omicron variant is spreading widely.
“The hotels in Los Cabos are full and there are more infections,” Castro said this week while summing up the situation.
Mexico doesn’t require incoming travelers to present negative COVID-19 test results or go into mandatory quarantine, a laissez-faire approach that has been good for tourism but which has been blamed for large coronavirus outbreaks in tourism hotspots both this year and last.
The lack of restrictions is risky because “we’re leaving the door open to the virus,” said Alejandro Sánchez, a researcher at the National Autonomous University (UNAM) Institute of Biotechnology.
Authorities in Mexico have only confirmed about 50 cases of omicron but the low number is likely due to scant genomic sequencing of the virus. Sánchez predicted that the variant will become the dominant strain in the country by the end of next month, with case numbers set to increase in early January due to gatherings over the Christmas-New Year period.
Other experts agree that Mexico is on the verge of a fourth wave.
Laurie Ann Ximénez-Fyvie, director of the Molecular Genetics Laboratory at UNAM, said in a radio interview that “international databases and information” indicate that 28% of current coronavirus infections in Mexico are caused by the omicron variant.
It’s proven that the strain is as contagious as measles, she said, noting that it has caused record high case numbers in Europe. The United States has also seen infections soar as omicron takes hold, while Mexico recorded its highest single-day case tally since late October on Tuesday, with 4,426 new cases reported.
Rodrigo Jácome Ramírez, a scientist and academic at UNAM, told the newspaper La Razón there is a high probability that omicron is already spreading across Mexico.
“We’re probably going to have a lot of cases,” he said, referring to the new strain, which early evidence indicates causes milder disease than other variants but is adept at evading vaccine-stimulated immunity.
“But if they’re not reporting [all the cases] we’re going to continue with this misleading idea that things are much better than they really are,” Ramírez said. “… These 53 reported cases [of omicron] are the tip of the iceberg …,” he said.
“We’re recording far fewer omicron cases than there really are because there isn’t a robust registration system in Mexico,” said Malaquías López, a public health professor at UNAM.
Four states are yellow on the new coronavirus map.
Andreu Comas, a virologist and researcher at the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí, told La Razón that family gatherings in December and the entry of travelers who weren’t required to show a negative test result will inevitably lead to an increase in COVID cases.
“All these crowds of people that are going to be in the airport these [vacation] days will develop symptoms in a few days and continue the chain of transmission. If instead of staying home they’re at tourist destinations we’re going to have large outbreaks … and in a few days when they return home they will spread the virus and it will be very concerning,” he said.
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell acknowledged Tuesday that Mexico could see a large number of coronavirus cases due to the spread of omicron, but expressed optimism that hospitalizations and deaths won’t spike significantly, “mainly due to … vaccination.”
More than 80% of Mexican adults are vaccinated against COVID-19, and the government has begun offering booster shots to those aged 60 and over. COVID-19 deaths in the first half of 2021 – when most adults had not yet been fully vaccinated – were much higher than in the second half of the year, even though case numbers spiked due to a delta variant surge. Official data shows there were 107,240 fatalities between January and June, while 65,897 deaths were recorded between July 1 and December 28, a 39% decline.
Mexico’s official death toll currently stands at 298,944, while the confirmed case tally is 3.95 million. Both figures are considered vast undercounts. Estimated active case numbers currently number just under 23,000, including more than 5,000 in Mexico City and close to 2,000 in each of Baja California and BCS.
An updated version of the federal government’s coronavirus stoplight map took effect on Monday and shows four states are ranked at medium-risk yellow — one fewer than the previous map — while the rest remain green.
Durango switched from yellow to green; Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua and Aguascalientes remain yellow.
The map is in effect until January 9.
It remains to be seen whether the spread of omicron will push Mexico to new peaks in terms of case numbers, but as evidence suggests the new strain causes less severe disease it is inevitable that, in a country where testing is not a forte, many cases of the variant will go undetected and thus unreported in official data.
Nevertheless, as Tuesday’s case numbers indicate and experts warn, the coronavirus is set to cause a lot more sickness in Mexico – a country hit harder than most by a pandemic now in its third devastating year.
