Report: Mexico's COVID-19 policies cost huge number of lives
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s unwillingness to spend money, do more testing, change course or react to new scientific evidence contributed to the country being one of the worst hit by the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report released this week by the University of California, San Francisco.
Mexico would have had a significantly lower death toll if it had reacted as well as the average government, according to the University’s Institute for Global Health Sciences, which also released a report sharply critical of the U.S. response to COVID-19.
Mexico’s Health Department says there have been almost 210,000 deaths in the country of 126 million, but because so little testing is done, it acknowledges the real toll is around 330,000. The United States and Brazil have higher tolls, but much larger populations.
The failure by officials to recommend face masks, institute travel restrictions, provide enough testing and protective equipment and institute social distancing measures were among the mistakes cited by the report, which was commissioned by the World Health Organization’s Independent Panel to the Institute for Global Health.
“Key decisions about how to confront the health crisis were based on unwarranted assumptions, without sufficient evaluation and judgement of the risks,” according to the report, which cited excessive concentration of authority and “a government communication campaign that prioritized keeping up appearances, and partisan politics, before health.”
For example, Assistant Health Secretary Hugo López Gatell, who has acted as the government’s point-man in the pandemic, repeatedly said that wearing face masks did not protect people from catching COVID-19, even after evidence mounted that they did.
“It is no coincidence that countries with the worst performance in responding...
