On 7 August Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador dismissed adjusting the national strategy to address the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, insisting that his government has adequately handled the public health emergency.
Analysis:
Mexico has the world’s third highest Covid-19 death toll, with the number of deaths and infections still rising. There have been growing calls by political leaders for a change in strategy to bring the epidemic under control. López Obrador’s stubborn defence of his government’s strategy despite the high death toll and refusal to contemplate alternatives to try to save more lives is becoming the main source of political tension in the country.
- After Mexico’s death toll overtook that of the United Kingdom last week, a group of opposition governors called for a review of the federal government’s Covid-19 strategy. They argue that the strategy has clearly failed to limit the number of preventable deaths. Meanwhile the main opposition Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) accused López Obrador of being “criminally complicit” in the deaths of thousands of people by pursuing a flawed strategy.
- Mexico’s death toll exceeded 50,000 on 6 August but the following day López Obrador once again defended his government’s handling of the pandemic and rejected the need for changes. He said that Mexico has succeeded in flattening the infection curve and strengthening its health system, which prevented hospitals from becoming saturated with Covid-19 patients.
- López Obrador lamented the high number of deaths but emphasised that nobody failed to receive medical treatment. He attributed the elevated death toll to the high incidence of health problems such as obesity and hypertension amongst Mexicans and noted that Mexico’s death rate per 1m inhabitants is lower than in the United Kingdom, Peru, Spain, Italy, Chile, the US, Brazil, and France. “We have not been hit as hard”, López Obrador argued, insisting that the strategy is working.
Looking Ahead: Indicative of the growing public discontent over the government’s pandemic response, demonstrators yesterday (9 August) displayed an enormous black ribbon in Mexico City’s central Zócalo square to “commemorate the death of the more than 50,000 people killed by the federal government’s mishandling of the pandemic”.