Mexico 4th nation to hit 100,000 virus deaths

Mexico passed the 100,000 mark in Covid-19 deaths yesterday, becoming the fourth country — behind the US, Brazil and India — to do so.

Jose Luis Alomia Zegarra, Mexico’s director of epidemiology, announced that Mexico had 100,104 confirmed Covid-19 deaths.

The milestone comes less than a week after the country said it had topped 1 million registered coronavirus cases, though officials agree the number is probably much higher.

Mexico’s living bear the scars of the pandemic along with their lost friends and loved ones.

Many surviving coronavirus victims say the psychosis caused by the pandemic is one of the most lasting effects.

Mexico resembles a divided country, where some people are so unconcerned they won’t wear masks, while others are so scared they descend into abject terror at the first sign of shortness of breath.

With little testing being done and a general fear of hospitals, many in Mexico are left to home remedies and relatives’ care. Such is the case in the poverty- stricken Ampliacion Magdalena neighbourhood on Mexico City’s rough east side, where most people work as day labourers at the city’s sprawling produce market.

The busy market was the scene of one of the first big outbreaks in the greatermetropolitan area, home to 21 million people, and so early on in the pandemic local undertakers were swamped with corpses.

The local funeral home “looked like a bakery, with people lined up, with hearses lined up,” said community leader Daniel Alfredo Lopez Gonzalez.

The owner of the funeral home told him some people waited to get bodies embalmed for burial while others were in the line to get their relatives’ remains cremated.

The lack of testing — Mexico tests only people with severe symptoms — the lack of hospitals in many areas and the fear of the ones that do exist, has created a fertile breeding ground for ignorance, suspicion and fear. AP