MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 05th July, 2020) The Mexican government might be downplaying tens of thousands of deaths from the official coronavirus statistics, the Financial Times reported on Saturday, citing a compilation of independent studies.
According to the report, the reason the official statistics gets belittled is that Mexican health authorities only report cases and deaths confirmed in labs and also do not conduct that many tests. Saying that some 67 percent of roughly 610,000 total tests came back positive, the newspaper opined that chances are many more cases are being missed.
Furthermore, reporting of cases comes with delays and figures get ascribed to already past month, the report continued.
A study by researchers Mario Romero and Laurianne Despeghel has shown, as cited in the report, that the true death toll is at least 3.5 times higher than the official statistics in Mexico City alone show.
Another cited study, conducted by Mexican professor Raul Rojas, found that Mexico could have as many as 6 million cases and close to 78,000 deaths, which is almost three times higher than the official numbers.
According to another study, as cited in the report, there was a 126 percent increase in the number of death certificates issued in Mexico City since the start of the pandemic, regardless of the cause of death, compared to the same period's average from 2016-2018.
Latin America is emerging as the world's fastest growing outbreak at the moment. As pointed out by the Financial Times, Brazil remains the region's country with the highest death toll, but converted to the death toll per 1 million people, Mexico is not so far behind.
The report concludes by arguing that the surest way to judge on genuine statistics is by excess deaths compared to previous years' averages.
Mexico has so far reported 245,251 cases and 29,843 fatalities from COVID-19.
