Oscar David Hernández Carranza wants Mexico’s undersecretary for prevention and health promotion to resign after he allegedly failed to act to reduce COVID-19 cases and deaths.
He told Mexico Business Daily that Hugo López-Gatell Ramirez failed to create and implement a plan to coordinate efforts to curb the spread of the coronavirus. In addition he refused to let some hospitals perform tests and later said the tests for the coronavirus were of no use.
Even after news spread around the world about the global pandemic, the health official allowed a major festival to go on. By time Mexico had its first coronavirus case, flawed screening prevented even the testing of the patient. And when governors were sent protective equipment for doctors and nurses, it was of low quality and often not enough supplies were sent.
Mexico still does not test for the coronavirus and the information delivered to the public is wrong and unfounded, Hernández Carranza said.
The founder and president of Premio Nacional de Salud, said the organization estimates Mexico had 176,800 COVID-19 cases as of April 22. He said the mortality range lets them know how many infections there were. When the mortality rate increases, the number of infections would have risen.
“The data of the Mexican authorities is not credible,” he told Mexico Business Daily.
The government uses a sentinel program that estimates Mexico had 10,544 confirmed cases April 23.
Premo Nacional de Salud estimates 35,360 people will require hospitalization in Mexico and 16,265 will die as a consequence of the coronavirus.
By covering up the real data, López-Gatell endangers the entire population in Mexico, Hernández Carranza told Mexico Business Daily. The country has 21 million formal workers in confinement. Another 31 informal workers on the streets do not understand the seriousness of the problem because they see the low numbers.
“We will experience the consequence with an increase in cases but above all with the saturation of hospitals and deaths,” he said.
Hernández Carranza said it isn’t clear if López-Gatell is only a spokesman or is responsible for coordinating the country in the pandemic.
He’s failed as a spokesman since he has no credibility and hasn’t been transmitting the data, the Premio Nacional de Salud founder said.
“But as designated to face the pandemic, his actions have been ignored, irresponsible and even criminal,” Hernández Carranza said.
In his call for the undersecretary’s resignation on April 16 in El Economista, Hernández Carranza cited failures such as allowing the Vive Latino music festival to be held March 14-15, where 115,331 people came together.
López-Gatell failed to provide a strategic plan for the population to follow and also failed to coordinate states and municipalities to the extent that many have had to make decisions for their own populations, Hernandez Carranza said.
One of the biggest factors Hernández Carranza cited in his call for resignation is that López-Gatell failed in the preventive, operative and corrective actions.
“COVID-19 tests are lacking, equipment in hospitals, protective equipment for cleaning, stretcher bearers, nurses and doctors,” he said. “There are insufficient beds to care for the thousands of patients (there are seven saturated hospitals in Mexico City and Baja California, and we are far from reaching the peak of infections].”
On March 3, López-Gatell had prohibited private hospitals from performing the coronavirus tests. He repeated that on March 19, saying the tests are of no use, Hernández Carranza wrote in his El Economista opinion.
The undersecretary never implemented a plan to enable efficient coordination of the thousands of officials, medical leaders, entrepreneurs and others who were ready to cooperate, the opinion piece noted.
“We see the governors working alone, the opinion leaders and the isolated society, striving to make face masks, isolated entrepreneurs creating hospitals and civil society organization adding facilities and talent to help. But they are all great but isolated actions,” Hernández Carranza said.
Finally, Mexico does not have a corrective action plan that allows redirecting and directing common efforts or the force of the state while faced with clear situations of omissions, he said.
