New confirmed Covid-19 cases in Mexico fall for 4th straight week

Mexico City, Sep 7 (EFE).- Mexico’s public health situation is improving rapidly even amid its Delta variant-fueled third pandemic wave, with new confirmed Covid-19 cases having now fallen for four straight weeks, the country’s coronavirus czar said Tuesday.

“For the fourth consecutive week, there’s been a continued and accelerated reduction in cases in the country,” Deputy Health Secretary Hugo Lopez-Gatell said during President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s daily press briefing at Mexico City’s National Palace.

He said Mexico’s 34th epidemiological week began with a 26 percent reduction in new confirmed coronavirus cases relative to the previous week and predicted that the downward trend in cases would continue over the next several days.

Mexico is making continued progress in its vaccination plan, with 66 percent of the adult population having received at least one dose, Lopez-Gatell said.

He added that an average of more than 500,000 Covid-19 vaccine doses are being administered daily, reiterating that the government is on pace to achieve its goal of administering at least one dose to all people 18 years and over by Oct. 31.

To date, 61 percent of inoculated Mexicans have received the full vaccine series and 39 percent have received one dose, the coronavirus czar said.

“Hospitalizations (also) are falling. There’s a clear downward trend; space is starting to be freed up at hospitals and fewer people are entering than are being discharged,” Lopez-Gatell said.

Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said for his part that Mexico has received more than 100 million Covid-19 vaccine doses.

Of those imports, 73 percent were pre-packaged doses from countries like the United States, Russia, Argentina and England and the remaining 27 percent were packaged in Mexico.

“We’re moving at the scheduled pace,” Ebrard said.

That official said 300,000 vaccine doses will be sent this week to Honduras and Bolivia and that more doses will be shipped at a later time to Jamaica, Paraguay, Belize, Nicaragua and other countries.

Ebrard estimated that Mexico will have received more than 120 million doses by the end of October and that before year’s end that amount will climb to 150 million.

He recalled that the next meeting of the High-Level Economic Dialogue, a platform for Mexico and the US to advance their economic priorities, will take place in Washington on Thursday and provide an opportunity to discuss, among other issues, vaccine cooperation.

“Coordination will be sought out among critical industries” to prevent vaccine shortfalls and improve the availability of inputs and medical equipment during the health emergency, Ebrard said.

Lopez-Gatell, for his part, said a nationwide monitoring effort coordinated with the Public Education Secretariat has shown no evidence that the recent reopening of Mexican schools has led to a significant increase in coronavirus cases.

Since the onset of the Covid-19 crisis in Mexico, children and adolescents have made up a considerably small amount of the caseload – below 10 percent, he added.

For her part, Public Education Secretary Delfina Gomez said that since in-person instruction resumed on Aug. 30 Covid-19 cases have been detected in 88 of the country’s 135,230 schools, or just 0.06 percent of the total.

Of the schools with coronavirus cases, 39 of them – or only 0.03 percent of all schools open at the end of last month – have temporarily closed as a preventive measure.

Mexico has registered 3,433,511 confirmed coronavirus cases since the onset of the health emergency there, according to the Health Secretariat’s latest figures, while the reported Covid-19 death toll stands at 263,470 (fourth-highest worldwide after the US, Brazil and India). EFE

csr/mc