Recently, three different news organizations took a look at what is going on in Mexico in terms of under-reporting.
The New York Times (May 8) was first on the case:
Mexico City officials have tabulated more than 2,500 deaths from the virus and from serious respiratory illnesses that doctors suspect were related to Covid-19, according to the data, which was reviewed by The New York Times. Yet the federal government is reporting about 700 in the area, which includes Mexico City and the municipalities on its outskirts.
. . . The government says Mexico has been faring better than many of the world’s largest countries, and on Monday its Covid-19 czar estimated that the final death toll would be around 6,000 people.
“We have flattened the curve,” Hugo López-Gatell, the health ministry official who has become the face of the country’s response, said this week.
. . . Several experts also questioned Mexico’s assumptions of how quickly the epidemic will pass. Its model shows a sharp rise in infections, followed by a sharp decline. But in almost no other country in the world has there been a rapid decline after a peak.
(By following a link in the article, I came across this one that estimated that deaths in Italy for the month of March might be under-estimated by 10,900. That would result in Italy having over 42,000 deaths. Science Direct estimated that there were 24,981 deaths in the 2016/2017 flu season - the worse number of deaths of the years they tracked, the average was 17,000. Since that is just the month of March and excludes April/May under-counting and any future deaths, it would seem entirely reasonable that the coronavirus will be 100% worse than the worse flu season that Italy has seen in recent history.)
This is what I take away from the quotes:
Mexico City is trying their best to be far more accurate about the number of deaths occurring in the city versus the federal government. This makes me feel like the federal government is purposely deceiving their citizens about how bad the virus really is.
The 6,000 deaths forecasts seems entirely unrealistic. When the article was written, the total deaths per Worldometer was 2,961. As of Sunday, it was at 5,045. It is possible that the federal government is updating their numbers based on inputs from Mexico City or maybe there is still a significant gap in reporting. Either way, the 6,000 forecast has probably been revised much higher since this article went to press.
Final item I noticed is how Mexico is assuming that infections will rapidly decline.
Sky UK (May 13) decided to take a look:
In much of Mexico City, the second largest city in Latin America, there is virtually no social distancing, with open air markets and some businesses operating normally, despite the coronavirus pandemic.
. . . An official within the government, but speaking anonymously, confirms the official figures are undercounting the actual mortality rate by a factor of at least five.
. . . There is currently a three-day backlog for cremation at every public crematorium in the city and crematorium workers in recent days have indicated that more burials will have to take place because burning capacity is overwhelmed.
The article goes on to do a Mexico City/state of Mexico excess death analysis looking at 2014 - 2018 figures. They came up with an average of 374 daily deaths in the month of May versus the current average of 600. So Sky UK is estimating that through the first half of May, 226 deaths are most likely related to the virus. If that average in excess deaths continued for a period of time, the number of deaths would quickly become significant. If that continued for the full month of May, that alone would take deaths in all of Mexico pass the 6,000 forecast.
In the quote, there is mention that some businesses are operating as normal, which contrasts with this Reuters (March 22) article about stay at home orders in the city. Of course, it is hard to shut down an economy down for nearly 2 months.
The LA Times (May 17) is the final article I read about coronavirus death under-counting:
The widespread belief that Mexico’s official death toll is artificially low — and the inability of the government to correct it — have become fodder for critics of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador as the country of more than 120 million begins to reopen its economy. He recently complained: “They suggest we are hiding the dead.”
. . . Dr. Hugo López-Gatell, Mexico’s undersecretary of health and head of coronavirus policy, told reporters Thursday that the country had generally reserved testing “for cases sufficiently grave to be hospitalized” because that was all that was necessary to track to the spread of the virus.
He denied allegations that the budget-conscious administration of López Obrador — an early coronavirus skeptic who was relatively late to embrace social distancing — was purposely skimping on tests.
Here's what I noticed. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is considered to be on the left. I am constantly hearing/reading criticism of President Jair Bosonaro, Brazil, about his skepticism of the virus. He is on the right. Is there a little bias in the US media that goes after Bosonaro versus Obrador?
Finally, is Mexico close to getting this pandemic under control? Probably not if this article from Reuters (May 17) is any indication:
Every day, thousands of Mexicans crowd a massive food market that is a linchpin of the capital’s food supply, though it sits at the heart of a major hotspot for the virus.
. . . Still, completely shutting the market that serves a sizeable swath of Mexico’s 25 million people is not an option, said Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, because it would devastate the regional food supply.
The article mentions that 500,000 visit the market on a daily basis and that there are 100,000 workers. It also mentions that traffic has fallen by 30%, which would imply that there are still 350,000 coming through on a daily basis.
Yet, as the mayor states, you can't starve a country to death so will this (or is it already) a coronavirus hotspot? This quote should also be taken into context with similar issues in the United States (meat processing plants) and food security.
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