Mexico did not act soon enough and has not done enough in the face of COVID-19, according to criticism the country is facing inside its borders and internationally.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) noted April 28 that Mexico’s testing rate was the lowest of all of its countries: just 0.4 tests per 1,000 individuals. When examined for comparison, Mexico’s government had tested 261 individuals as of April 18. Pakistan, the Philippines and Bolivia have tested more people. The average test rate for developed, industrialized nations is 22.9 tests per 1,000 individuals, according to OECD.
Yet even with the criticism lobbed at his country, Mexican undersecretary of health Hugo Lopez-Gatell, the official in charge of response to the COVID-19 pandemic, insists that massive tests aren’t necessary.
Why?
Because the “sentinel epidemiological system serves to detect cases and isolate them without the need for tests,” he said.
In a conference on COVID-19, Lopez-Gatell went as far as criticizing the rest of the world for conducting massive tests, because, he said that led to misinterpretations.
The country is not reporting an accurate number of cases, say experts in data management, noting that compared to Lopez-Gatell’s reporting, confirmed cases should be 20-30 times higher.
Data published by the undersecretary of health is inconsistent, featuring “pregnant men” with COVID-19, and notes of people dead two months before their hospitalization dates, for example.
When the Mexican government announced that the country was flattening the curve – an argument that is debatable – Lopez-Gatell showed that in Mexico mobility had been reduced by 70 percent as a result of the policies the government had adopted.
But, when LatinUs analyzed the data, the media organization concluded that on March 23, when Lopez-Gatell first announced the social distancing recommendations, people weren’t moving around as much. According to LatinUs’ analysis, more than half of the country’s private vehicles (65 percent) were already not in use and public transportation use had fallen by 60 percent. There were also 70 percent fewer pedestrians.
The report states that “Mexican society observed what was happening in the world and in the face of the passivity of the government, chose to self-apply the measures.”
After April 27, when Lopez-Gatell told citizens to stay home, mobility only fell on average 9 percent in public transport, 7 percent in private cars, and 5 percent in pedestrians. In this sense, using Lopez-Gatell’s data mobility decreased mostly because of citizens’ self-imposed precautions (60 percent). Mobility only fell 10 percent more after the government issued their stay-at-home recommendation.
Mexico has not presented a plan to beat COVID-19, although programs announced by the government will remain in effect through June.
And LatinUS isn’t the only news outlet that has noticed the discrepancies in data and reporting.
The New York Times reported May 8 that the Mexican government is not accurately reporting deaths in the country’s capital city and that officials have counted more than three times the fatalities than what is officially reported.
Statista notes that by May 7 there had been 27,634 reported infections of COVID-19, and more than 2,700 deaths due to the virus in the city.
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