TOPLINE
Mexico’s coronavirus death toll has passed up that of the United Kingdom to become the nation with the third-highest number of virus fatalities, further highlighting Latin America’s status as a viral hotspot as many countries there show no indication that the end of the pandemic is anywhere in sight.
U.S. President Donald Trump welcomed Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to the White … [+]
Getty Images
KEY FACTS
On Friday, Mexico reported 688 new deaths for a total of 46,688, according to a tracker from Johns Hopkins University, just enough to push the country past the U.K’s total death count, which was listed as 46,204 on Friday.
Mexico now only has less reported coronavirus fatalities than the U.S. and Brazil, although its total case count still ranks sixth, behind countries like India, Russia and South Africa.
Despite the surge in recent reported cases and deaths, experts say the numbers are still likely an undercount.
Overtaking the U.K.’s death toll has renewed the pressure put on Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has fielded criticism for downplaying the pandemic and has garnered comparisons to Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and U.S. President Donald Trump, who lead the other two worst-hit countries.
On Friday, he made a comment to reporters that he would only wear a mask when Mexico’s corruption is no longer a problem—“then I’ll put on a mask and I’ll stop talking,” he said.
KEY BACKGROUND
Like his counterparts Bolsonaro and Trump, Lopez Obrador has spurned wearing a mask in public, resisted social distancing measures and criticized media outlets’ coverage of Mexico’s climbing cases. “The face mask has been politicized here the same way it has in the U.S. and the U.K., among other countries,” Mexico City sociologist Rodolfo Soriano-Núñez told The Guardian. The decision to wear a mask in public is considered by some in Mexico as a way to make a political statement, a similar phenomenon to what has been seen in the U.S. and Brazil and one that the countries’ presidents have been slammed for encouraging as a way to appeal to their base. Much of Latin America is struggling under the weight of the pandemic, as cases and deaths rise, and experts say the region’s economic inequality and disparate healthcare access makes many people living there particularly vulnerable to getting sick. Colombia on Friday passed 10,000 total deaths, with the country likely to hit 300,000 total confirmed cases by the end of the weekend, Reuters reported. According to a report from the Andalou Agency, Latin America makes up 30% of the world’s confirmed coronavirus deaths, despite accounting for only 8% of the global population.
Full coverage and live updates on the Coronavirus
