Mexico City, Mexico — The Undersecretary of Health warned that the coronavirus epidemic could re-emerge at the end of the year, affecting Mexico in October.
The undersecretary of Health for Mexico, Hugo López-Gatell, affirmed that the country can survive the epidemic saying that if social distancing measures had not been taken in time, the curve would be more pronounced and most of the country’s 126 million residents would be at risk.
“We are winning,” said the doctor from the National Palace in Mexico City. “The numbers are encouraging. We still have a very broad response capacity,” he stressed, assuring that the measures adopted allowed the country “to change the course of the epidemic and have very positive effects that have led to the reduction of transmission speed and contagion.”
Hugo López-Gatell says that Mexico still has a margin of response against the coronavirus, but, as some experts have warned, the current one could be just the first wave of contagion of the virus. “It is not logical to think that while there is an epidemic of infectious disease in the rest of the world, each country will be safe from reinfection,” said the official who also participated in the H1N1 fight in 2009.
“(Seasonal) influenza is going to come back in October, and it is going to go away in March. This is definitely going to happen. What we do not know, and what is probable, is that along with influenza, the second great wave of Covid-19 could come,” he explained.
“There are several people who say ‘we are blind, we have no information.’ He who wants to go blind is blind. We have the adequate information to make decisions.”
“You don’t need the number of cases. What is needed is to understand the data and understand what the mechanics of an epidemic are like in order to make the most appropriate decisions.”