Mexico Runs Out of Death Certificates After Rush of Covid-19
Mexico Runs Out of Death Certificates After Rush of Covid Cases
(Bloomberg) -- Mexico’s deputy health minister said the government had ordered 1.1 million additional death certificates be printed as several parts of the country ran out and Covid-19 cases continue to soar.
Mexico has registered over 67,000 coronavirus-related fatalities, putting it fourth in terms of Covid-19 deaths behind the U.S., Brazil and India.
The World Health Organization, though, said recently that Mexico’s Covid-19 cases and deaths are probably “under-recognized” due to limited testing there.
That assessment was backed up on Sunday by new government figures showing deaths in Mexico from March to August from all causes were 122,765 more than what would be expected in a normal year. Excess mortality was concentrated in people from 45 to 65 years of ago.
Despite this scenario, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has said the government’s strategy to tackle the coronavirus was “very good.”
Speaking in a press conference Friday evening, Hugo Lopez Gatell, the health official, said that some states, including Mexico state, were out of death certificates. Authorities had been working for the past two to three weeks to redistribute them from areas with larger stocks, he added.
“They almost ran out in Mexico City,” the deputy minister said. “It has been a pretty intense job.”
The new certificates started to arrive on Thursday, just before stocks from the redistribution also ran out, Lopez Gatell said. According to data collected by Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg News, Mexico had 629,409 Covid-19 cases and 67,326 deaths through Saturday.
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