Spiking COVID-19 Cases in the Region; Mexico Records 501 Deaths in 24 Hours
In the last twenty-four hours, the U.S. is reporting five thousand four hundred and eighty new cases with two hundred and fifty-six deaths. Closer to home, neighbouring countries, such as Guatemala and Mexico, are spiking. Mexico recorded three thousand four hundred and fifty-five new cases, Honduras documented two hundred and twelve and Guatemala reported one hundred and ninety-four. In Belize, the mortality rate as a result of COVID-19 is at eleven point two percent, but the death rate is five per million, while Mexico is sixty-three and the U.S. is three hundred and five. Doctor Marvin Manzanero says that the government remains concerned about the spiking cases in the region, particularly in Mexico where in the last twenty-four hours five hundred and one persons died as a result of virus. Doctor Manzanero says that the ministry believes that the next potential case will be imported from Mexico via an illegal entry.
Marvin Manzanero
Dr. Marvin Manzanero, Director of Health Services
“Other than some of the Caribbean islands, English speaking, having no active cases or no recent cases, almost all other countries in the region are continuing to show spikes. Even Costa Rica, even though their numbers are much smaller than other countries, but Honduras, Nicaragua…if you go back to how they were one week ago and where they are now, it is ten times the reported official numbers at least. Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua are expecting to continue to rise as is Mexico; Mexico perhaps, taking one more month before they actually plateau. Yesterday, they had five hundred and one deaths—that’s the most amount of people reported dying as a result of COVID-19 in a space of twenty-four hours. So those numbers cannot be shelved. We need to review them on daily basis. Providing that we are not having interactions with people coming from those countries, we should be able to keep our cases the way we are for the Belize context. But we are assuming that that’s where the next potential case or cases can come from is that interaction, particularly the illegal ones. The legal ones is what we are trying to do in a control fashion to avoid the potential problem that you won’t be able to take a grip on earlier on.”
