In a region where trust in government is low, citizens are less inclined to listen to pandemic pleas from officialdom
afternoon in Mexicali, in northern Mexico, Erick Mercado pondered what was coming. The private Hispanic American Hospital, where he runs the accident-and-emergency service, had cancelled all elective surgery and made plans to seal off the second floor. In half an hour, he explained, the governor of Baja California would confirm the state’s first coronavirus cases. People with flu-like symptoms, Dr Mercado predicted, would “go into a panic” and rush to hospitals for testing.
The rest of Latin America shares its plight. The region is reporting more cases each day than Europe did during its covid-19 peak in April. By some measures it is the world’s most urbanised region, which may help explain the virus’s spread. Governments’ responses have varied greatly. Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has been cavalier, dismissing covid-19 as “sniffles” and breaching his own health ministry’s social-distancing advice. Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega imposed no lockdown.
A quasi-quarantine is better than none. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico’s president, has said in private meetings that his priority is to avoid the apocalypse that struck Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, where corpses lay in the streets in April. Mexico’s quarantine achieved that, buying time for the government to find extra beds, doctors and ventilators, educate citizens and review research about how to halt the virus.
Covid-19’s devastation is greater than the government admits. Among the 25 countries with most cases, none tests fewer people than Mexico as a share of population. Two in five tests are positive, a sign that the outbreak is being badly undercounted. An analysis of death certificates shows that between April 1st and June 7th Mexico City had 17,000 more deaths than it normally does over that period. This suggests a toll nearly four times the government’s count.
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