Coronavirus. Second wave in Mexico is expected in October: López-Gatell

The Undersecretary of Health, Hugo López-Gatell, assured that if social distancing measures had not been taken in time, the curve would be more pronounced and most of the 126 million Mexicans would be at risk, despite the fact that the number of infected and deceased people has been doubling in recent weeks.

“We are winning”The doctor, the most visible face of the fight against covid-19 in the country, said in an interview with Reuters on Monday night at the National Palace in Mexico City, the seat of the Executive Power.

“The numbers are encouraging. We still have a very wide response capacity ”, He stressed by ensuring that the measures adopted allowed “change the course of the epidemic and have very positive effects that have led to the reduction of transmission speed and contagion.”

But, as some experts have warned, the current one could be just the first wave of virus contagion, which has left 3.6 million infected and more than 251 thousand deceased around the world, according to a Reuters count.

“It is not logical to think that while there is an epidemic of infectious disease in the rest of the world, each country will be safe from reinfection,” said the 51-year-old official, who participated in the team that fought the influenza A pandemic ( H1N1) in 2009.

“(Seasonal) influenza is going to come back in October and it is going to go away in March. This is definitely going to happen. What we don’t know – and it is probable – is that, along with influenza, the second great wave of covid-19 could come ”he anticipated.

In addition to social distancing, the government called on citizens to stay home, schools and universities suspended face-to-face classes. Stadiums, museums and shops and industries considered “non-essential” were also closed.

The Valley of Mexico, which includes the capital and the contiguous State of Mexico and which houses some 21 million inhabitants, is the area most affected by the coronavirus in the country. Still, the doctor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University said that they are “well below” the 10,000 infected expected for the area and that they could reach only half.

For the whole country, the authorities hope to reach about 6 thousand deceased, 25 percent less than estimated before the most acute phase of the pandemic began.

Mexico: blind to the coronavirus?

Mexico is the country that less evidence To detect the coronavirus, the nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have carried out: just 0.4 tests per thousand inhabitants, while the entity’s average is 22.9.

However, López-Gatell argued that the country does not need to do as many tests to make sound policies. According to an official estimate, Mexico had 104,562 infected until two weeks ago, unlike the almost 25,000 that it has reported according to tests.

“You don’t need the number of cases. What is needed is to understand the data and understand what the mechanics of an epidemic are like in order to make the most appropriate decisions, ”he said. “There are several people who say ‘we are blind, we have no information.’ He who wants to go blind is blind. We have the adequate information to make decisions ”.

To support his claim, the official made an analogy with the increasing numbers of homicides in Mexico and explained that the government does not need to know the number of these to take preventive actions against organized crime, which left, on average, 95 murders a day on last year.

Death toll from coronavirus underestimated

In addition, he noted that “It is very likely” that in Mexico the real number of deaths due to the coronavirus is being underestimated, after receiving criticism that, supposedly, many deaths related to covid-19, the disease transmitted by the coronavirus, were being diagnosed as “atypical pneumonia”.

“(The number of deaths is underestimated) with influenza every year, it should not be different in the case of an emerging disease such as covid-19”, López-Gatell pointed out, who predicted that it is very likely that, two or three years after the start of the pandemic, there will be “very important revelations about what happened in retrospect.”

On the other hand, he assured that The restart dates of key economic sectors such as the automotive industry have not yet been defined., after President Andrés Manuel López Obrador stated that he would allow him to resume activities on a par with the sector in the United States.

“Not necessarily (Mexico must reopen before the United States). Mexico entered the covid-19 epidemic a month after the United States. At any given time, if the United States is already in a stabilization phase of its epidemic, Mexico is barely there, ”López-Gatell said.

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