Mexico COVID deaths top 100K
Reporting on milestone irks president, a skeptic of mask use
MEXICO CITY — A day after Mexico passed the 100,000 mark in confirmed COVID-19 deaths, becoming only the fourth country to do so, its president and the mayor of its capital struck dramatically different tones.
With 100,104 confirmed COVID-19 deaths, Mexico trails only the United States, Brazil and India.
Mexico’s number includes only test-confirmed deaths; the true toll is far higher. In late October, a government study of excess mortality found that a total of about 140,000 deaths this year were probably attributable to the new coronavirus, a number that has only grown since then.
The milestone came less than a week after Mexico topped 1 million registered coronavirus infections, though officials agree that number is also probably much higher because of low levels of testing.
Coverage of the back-to-back milestones has raised the hackles of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who suggested Friday that criticism of the country’s pandemic polices are political attacks and compared critics to “vultures.”
His administration has cast doubt on the usefulness of face masks — the president almost never wears one — and has defended its low rate of testing.
“Why change?” he said Friday of his administration’s pandemic policies.
Mexico City took a step in a different direction Friday, opening kiosks in some of its most affected neighborhoods to begin providing rapid tests to even the asymptomatic.
“What we are doing is substantially increasing the number of tests, which helps us a lot to isolate positive cases,” Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said Friday.
In other developments:
Canada’s largest city is going back into lockdown because of a surge in COVID-19 cases. The Ontario provincial government announced Friday that Toronto and the Peel Region suburb will go into lockdown Monday.
■ Intensive care units in New Delhi’s hospitals are nearly at capacity, and the city’s main crematorium is packed as the coronavirus has surged in the Indian capital. The country hit a grim milestone Friday, recording 9 million infections.
■ Australia’s once hard-hit state of Victoria has gone three weeks without a new COVID-19 case for the first time since February. There are two just active coronavirus cases remaining across Victoria, according to figures released Friday by the health department.
■ The Dutch government will prioritize people over 60, those in health risk groups and front-line health care workers for coronavirus vaccinations when the shots become available, the health ministry announced Friday.
■ France’s government is working to get agreement from the nation’s e-commerce sector and supermarket chains to delay the Black Friday discount shopping promotion by a week to Dec. 4, when the national lockdown will be over.