Mexico City, Mexico — Mexican health authorities estimate that the COVID-19 epidemic could see between 6,000 and 8,000 deaths around the country. The estimate came from Hugo López-Gatell Ramírez, Subsecretario de Prevención y Promoción de la Salud Thursday during a morning press conference.
López-Gatell said that in most countries, between 50 percent and 80 percent of COVID-19 sufferers have died in intensive care. Following this pattern and calculating that in Mexico some 10,000 people will end up in these circumstances, “we would be talking about 6,000 people, 7,000 or 8,000 people who could lose their lives.”
As of April 23, Mexico has reported more than 11,600 confirmed cases and over 1,000 deaths. López-Gatell estimated that the maximum peak of infections is expected to take place between May 8 and 10. During the peak, the number of daily cases would double, reaching thousands of new cases every 24 hours.
He says that that among the official forecasts, there are an estimated 250,000 sick people and “many more infected” but without presenting symptoms of the disease. Half of these people, about 125,000, would require medical attention and around 10,500 would require intensive therapy.
“These are figures that we maintain as a reference to guarantee the necessary resources to attend to,” he said noting that the Mexican Government does not apply massive tests to the population but instead, calculates by means of an estimation model called sentinel, saying that the number of patients in the country could be about nine times greater than that registered. He also noted that the cities of Mexico City and Tijuana (Baja California) are the most saturated with the virus.
On Tuesday, the undersecretary of health announced the country had entered into Phase 3 and that social distancing measures had been extended until May 30.