Health

Mexico crosses 60,000 Covid-19 deaths, 550,000 cases

Mexico City, Aug 22 (efe-epa).- Mexico has recorded more than 60,000 deaths from over 550,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 since a pandemic was declared in late February, according to the health authorities on Saturday.

The Secretariat of Health reported a total of 60,254 deaths and 556,216 confirmed cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection, with 5,928 of them recorded on Saturday.

The death toll represents that “very catastrophic scenario” anticipated in June by the country’s body in charge of the pandemic, said health undersecretary Hugo Lopez-Gatell.

Over the last 24 hours, 6,482 fresh cases were reported by the health authorities, 1.17 percent more than the previous day, besides 644 deaths, which marked a 1.08 percent increase from Friday.

While presenting the daily update of the epidemic, the Director of Epidemiological Operational Research of the Secretariat of Health, Ana Lucia de la Garza Barroso, said that a total 1,253,432 tests have been carried out in the country so far on people suspected to have contracted the highly infectious virus.

She revealed that 46 percent of tests turned out positive, while 49 percent, or 614,070 people, were negative.

De la Garza added that another 83,146 patients were under observation as suspected Covid-19 patients as they were yet to receive the results of their tests from the laboratory.

The health official confirmed that the number of patients recovered in the country has already touched 380,492 since the start of the pandemic.

The country’s hospital network has a total of 31,534 general beds of which 19,800 remain free and another 11,734 – 37 percent of the total – have been occupied.

Mexico possesses a total 10,587 hospital beds equipped with a ventilator to attend to the most serious patients, and 7,137 of them are available while some 3,450 – 33 percent of the total – have been occupied.

The Mexican capital, along with the states of Mexico (center), Guanajuato (center), Tabasco (southeast) and Veracruz (east), are among the most severely affected by the novel coronavirus, and together they account for around 40 percent of the total cases in the country.

On Friday, the World Health Organization said that the extent of the coronavirus pandemic in Mexico is greater than it appears based on the official statistics, given that testing has continued to be limited while test positivity has remained very high. EFE-EPA

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