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López Obrador apologizes to doctors 2:28
(CNN Spanish) - The President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, attacked this Monday against some local and international media whose reports have questioned the official figures of positive cases and deaths by covid-19.
"A few days ago, a note was published in The New York Times on the concealment of the dead, the same as some media in Mexico have maintained, nothing more than now brought by the New York Times," he said.
Last week the American newspaper published a report in which it indicated that the Mexican government was hiding figures about an alleged increase in the number of deaths by covid-19 in the country's capital.
The New York Times based its information on interviews with doctors who work in the city's public hospitals, on anonymous sources and official data that the newspaper itself reviewed. Also in the opinions of experts who, according to the American newspaper, affirm that the government only accounts for a small part of the magnitude of the pandemic since it is carrying out very few diagnostic tests.
But in his usual morning conference, the Mexican president pointed out that the NYT did not do a good job. b “They acted in a biased manner, they lacked ethics. So if we act in accordance with the truth and do not lie, we do not steal, we do not betray the people, because there is nothing to fear, even if it is The New York Times, "said López Obrador, who did not clarify the doubts raised by the newspaper. American on the count of deaths in the capital of the country.
However, he noted that his government is not closed to criticism.
"There is controversy and questioning, criticism is exercised and there is democratic public life, it is very good that this is happening, everything that can be debated, even with false news that does not last and has no effect," he said.
The head of the newspaper's bureau in Mexico, Azam Ahmed, responded to questions about the publication, saying that no member of the Mexican government had denied the information in the report, nor those of the other international media that also question the figures.
On Friday, the head of government of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, also entered the controversy generated by the NYT. At a press conference he defended the official figures on covid-19 deaths in the city and explained why there could be some discrepancies in the reported data.
"We inform the Ministry of Health of the Government of Mexico, particularly in the area of epidemiology, of people who have died who have a test for covid-19, which are established through a series of guidelines established by the Ministry of Health of the Government Mexico with the World Health Organization, "said Sheinbaum, although he acknowledged that there are other deaths that are assessed by a technical committee to establish whether or not they are related to the virus.
"There are other deaths as well, but there is a technical committee of scientific specialists that determines whether these deaths are related to covid-19 or not related to covid-19 and these deaths are also reported to the Government of Mexico every day," added.
The undersecretary of Health, Hugo López-Gatell, and government spokesman before the pandemic also explained that deaths from covid-19 are accounted for not only through laboratory tests but also by a medical consensus: “Because sometimes it is not possible to reach do the test before the death, ”he said in a radio interview this Friday to the journalist Joaquín López-Dóriga.
The official also said that the number of cases confirmed through diagnosed tests only represents a part of the epidemic, this after the Spanish newspaper El País also published a report last week stating that, based on its own statistical estimate based on In official data, "Mexico would have between 620,000 and 730,000 symptomatic cases accumulated since the start of the pandemic."
López-Gatell acknowledges that possibly they would have more: "That if there were 2.5 million or 6 million I would not be surprised," he said in an interview with the journalist López-Dóriga.
AMLO