Mexico City, Mexico — Mexico’s Undersecretary of Health says the country is at the end of the covid-19 epidemic and reports that they will no longer issue epidemiological lights.
Health Undersecretary Hugo López Gatell explained that Mexico meets the four WHO criteria to consider it the end of the epidemic period. These, he detailed, include high response capacity (hospital occupancy of two percent), high vaccination coverage (90 percent coverage in people over 18 years of age), very few deaths detected (average of 4 deaths per day) and few positive cases detected (average of 292 infections per day).
During the morning press conference, López Gatell said “the SARS-CoV-2 virus is not going to leave humanity just as almost none of the respiratory viruses that have caused epidemics, including influenza, have gone away,” he admitted, but said it is time to move from the epidemic state and to a new state to learn to live with it.
“We have had an invariant reduction for more than three months, each time a minimum number of cases is maintained,” he added reporting a daily mortality rate of four covid-19 related deaths across the country.
“It is the first time that the whole of the world is synchronized in a reduction stage. On other occasions, one region rose while another lowered its infections. Now the whole world is practically all in a stage of reduction,” he said.
Given this scenario, López-Gatell reported that the covid-19 epidemiological risk light will no longer be issued as of May 1. He said that in its place, new health safety guidelines will be published that include a series of provisions, among which include the use of masks in open and closed public spaces.
He also said that information will be issued on a weekly basis and that the competent authorities will maintain surveillance of covid-19 across the country.