Hugo López-Gatell, during the press conference on September 29 when Mexico exceeded 75,000 deaths.Presidencia de México / EFE
Mexico confirms these days what the Government itself had already warned weeks ago, that the coronavirus crisis will leave more deaths than those known daily.
And that is so for reasons that anyone could see in their daily surroundings: people who died at home with unequivocal symptoms but who did not get a test or those who died in hospitals without the laboratory having confirmed the disease.
Since mid-July, a system was implemented so that doctors could notify those cases that were left out of the statistic, in such a way that those who died with symptoms of covid after having direct contact with an infected person or those who presented obvious symptoms, that is, deaths “by association” or “by ruling”.
Due to this change in the count, the system is correcting up the number of deaths.
Of the 82,348 reported this Tuesday, 2,634 have been incorporated following the new method.
And there are still 11,850 deaths pending to be confirmed by that same route.
The same happens with infected people.
Of the 794,608 positives, 25,050 are so without the need for conclusive tests, an accurate medical criterion is enough.
As on other occasions, these statistical jumps do not reflect what happened in the last 24 hours, but rather add old cases.
Since July 12, it has been possible to add cases without PCR tests and medical personnel have been trained to do so, said the general director of Epidemiology of the Government, José Luis Alomía.
Many are the countries that have been correcting their calculations in recent months, some upwards and others downwards, and they have communicated this to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Mexico, however, refuses to acknowledge that these changes represent a modification in its calculation.
"Mexico has not reported any errors so far," Alomía said at the conference this Tuesday.
Immediately afterwards, she presented the WHO document in slides that shows how "other countries have been correcting or modifying" the numbers of their pandemics.
But he did not explain what the Mexican government calls the incorporation of deaths that occurred "even in the months in which the pandemic began" and that "the States are seeing how many [of them] can be added to this statistic."
Correction?
Modification?
Alomía presented the corrections of countries such as Japan, Ecuador, Spain, France or Chile, due to changes in their calculation methods.
Spain, for example, excluded 12,000 cases because it understood that the serological tests carried out were not valid.
Others because they changed the way of counting.
Mexico too and its figures are on the rise.
The Undersecretary of Health, Hugo López-Gatell, both at the beginning of the conference and to finish it off, preferred to accuse those responsible for the media of paying more attention to their earnings than to journalistic rigor.
He showed the covers of three Mexican newspapers, at least two of which did not appear to have any errors, but they were not to the taste of Gatell, who considered that they did not do the country good.
“We invite the media to collaborate with the people by providing information.
Perhaps it is more attractive to increase sales and for this we resort to more striking news, to name it in some way, "he said.
He pointed out with disgust the exclamation marks that one of the newspapers carried in the headline to communicate the increase in deaths from covid, which was correctly indicated, by the way, that it was due to the day plus accumulated from other dates.
The undersecretary walks along the path that the Prime Minister, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, marks practically every day, in whose morning conferences he tells the media that they are not related to him or publish news and opinions that bother him.
Gatell came to do the same on Tuesday: “The interest of the country is [now] elsewhere.
Maybe [the media] could do without some profits and do a public good. "
It is possible, but asking them not to report what is going wrong in Mexico does not seem like the best way to benefit the population.
Looking back at other countries has been another of the lines followed by the Mexican Government to assert its fight against the coronavirus.
"If you compare Mexico with Spain, we have done better, they have an economic crisis and another health crisis," he said, for example, on August 17.
And yesterday, Alomía brought out the corrections of other countries reported to the WHO, although some improved their figures.
Mexico has resisted self-criticism throughout this process, although this is not the first time that its statistics have shocked the population: at the end of May they reported that the number of deaths reported daily also included deaths that occurred weeks or months behind.
They recognized it because the population wondered, as has happened now, what was the reason for this sudden increase in the number of deaths in the statistics.
Incidentally, it was discovered that predictions about the course of the disease were useless for that reason, since it was not known for sure how it evolved from day to day.
All countries have faced this pandemic with methodological uncertainties and have incorporated changes.
Mexico refuses to recognize its own and opts for attacking the media.