The Mexican government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic is drawing the attention of the country's public health workers and former health officials.
Julio Frenk, Salomon Chertorivski Woldenberg and Jose Narro Robles have recently openly criticized the government's coronavirus response, particularly the work of Deputy Health Secretary Hugo Lopez-Gatell, appointed by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to lead the Mexico's efforts to control and stop the virus.
Frenk served as a Mexico’s Secretary of Health from 2000 to 2006; Woldenberg held the position between 2011 and 2012; Robles held the position from 2016 to 2018.
In an El Economista interview, Frenk suggested that the sampling method used by Lopez-Gatell has methodology errors that limit the Mexico's ability to clearly understand the pandemic stage which the country is currently facing. He also suggests that the number of confirmed cases is 30 to 50 times higher than the government's suggested cases.
“In the face of erratic policies, the uncertainty is huge, and that affects the effectiveness (of the strategy) because we do not know where the hot spots are," said Frenk. "And as a result of the refusal to conduct more tests, we don’t know the number of true cases and we do not have a good idea of the lethality rate."
He said Mexico is not only in last place in the OECD countries for testing, but in the last place in Latin America.
Jose Narro posted a 6-part tweet on April 28 questioning Lopez-Gatell’s data.
"It does not make sense and generates distrust and uncertainty," Narro tweeted. "And that’s not the first time that Lopez-Gatell’s data has had this result – look back to the 2009 data for the H1N1 pandemic. With an estimated number of cases that ranges from 8 to 30 times higher than official reports, that range raises questions on its own."
“That is why you can’t believe him! He knows that the amount of confirmed cases is incomplete. That is why he never wanted to apply massive testing,” Narro said.
Narro also said that many cases of the coronavirus are distorted by statistics for the 2019-2020 influenza season.
“Many cases of #covid19 are inside the statistics for influenza, as well as many deaths by coronavirus are in the data for atypical pneumonia and similar diseases,” he tweeted.
He suggests that President Obrador is not solely to blame because health experts like Lopez-Gatell tell him what he wants to hear.
Chertorivski started a petition on Change.org to ask the government to create and release a proper rescue plan for the Mexican economy.
While Canada and the U.S. approved enormous economic relief packages, the Mexican government is not taking similar action, he said in a March 27 interview. Instead, the government “invites us to walk slowly" and "at its own pace" while the symptoms of a health and economic crisis expands.
“We had a period of at least three months to prepare, and we didn’t do it,” Chertorivski said in an El Financiero interview.
He has also criticized the information coming from Lopez-Gatell. On March 18, he wrote:
“First of all, until today, all that is relevant and which has been informed to us citizens, has passed through the undersecretary of Health Prevention and Promotion (Hugo Lopez-Gatell). We have seen meetings: by education authorities, governors, and activities here and there, but in a disjointed and isolated manner, with no clear orders to equally compel us all.”
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