Mexico has continued the process of reopening its economy despite a severe undercount of COVID-19 cases and not having reached the peak of the virus’s spread in the country. As of this article’s publication, the National Council for Science and Technology had reported 191,410 cases and 23,377 deaths. This is currently the fourth highest number of cases in Latin America after Brazil, Peru and Chile, and the second highest number of deaths in the region after Brazil.
A plurality of these cases have been within the confines of the nation’s capital, with Mexico City reporting 42,903 cases as of June 23. The neighboring State of Mexico, which is home to many of the capital’s suburbs, has the country’s second highest number of cases.
However, experts believe that the rates of cases and deaths are much higher than is being reported, with Spanish newspaper El País estimating that the country had 17 times more cases than reported in May.
Part of this undercount is due to a lack of testing. Oxford University reported that Mexico had one of the lowest testing rates in the world at 1.67 tests per every one positive test as of June 23.
Despite this, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s administration began the process of reopening the country’s economy in early June. The states of Quintana Roo and Baja California Sur, two of the nation’s largest contributors to the international tourism sector, have already reopened their hotels, restaurants and beaches at a limited capacity. Tourism provides 11 million jobs to the Mexican economy.
Additionally, factories in Mexico City reopened on June 16 with a number of sanitary rules in place.
The Lopez Obrador administration has been criticized for its handling of the pandemic, specifically regarding the undercount of cases, the premature reopening of the economy and the president’s refusal to provide any sort of stimulus package or other form of economic relief to Mexico’s citizens.
Former Minister of Finance Carlos Urzua criticized the president in an interview with The New York Times, stating that Lopez Obrador was not taking the necessary precautions to alleviate any economic fallout.
“The government should help the private sector as much as it can, otherwise our gross domestic product could drop as much as 10%, which would be a disaster,” Urzua said. “It can be done … [but] Lopez Obrador really has no clue of the storm that is coming.”
President Lopez Obrador has defended his decision to not raise government spending above 1% as was reported in the same article from The New York Times, stating that the data he uses suggests the country is on the right track.
While the Mexican economy will continue to reopen for the foreseeable future, the international community will still impose restrictions on travel to and from the country. The United States recently announced that it would maintain a closed border with Mexico for all nonessential travel through July 21.
Jacob Sutherland
is a recent graduate from the University of California San Diego where he majored in Political Science and minored in Spanish Language Studies. He previously served as the News Editor for The UCSD Guardian, and hopes to shed light on social justice issues in his work.