Name: How badly hit is Mexico by coronavirus? - BBC News
Uploaded: 2020-07-02T18:20:15.000Z
Duration: 9 min 28 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

We told you about Corona virus in the Americas, which the wh Joe believes, is now at the center off the pandemic.

Tonight we're taking a closer look at Mexico.

Mexico's government says that it's now reached the peak of the pandemic with 38,000 cases and close to 4000 deaths.

But there is evidence which suggests that the true figures are much higher.

According to The New York Times, hundreds or possibly thousands of deaths ago on reported in Mexico City.

Its own analysis found deaths in the capital with three times higher than the federal figures, and it has startling evidence.

In some hospitals, patients lie on the floor splayed on mattresses.

Elderly people are propped up on metal chairs because there are not enough beds.

While experts have told us that under counting of deaths is a worldwide problem.

But The Wall Street Journal explains why is particularly acute in Mexico.

This article reviewed 105 death certificates in April, with some worrying results off the only four Affirmed Cove in 19 while 64 death certificates were labeled eight typical pneumonia.

Some experts are critical of Mexico's low testing.

It ranks last for covert 19 testing in the O.

That's the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Now, despite cases going up, Mexico's president wants to restart the slumping economy on there's even an out plans to gradually ease.

Locked down from the first of June, there has been resistance to nationwide restrictions.

These images were taken outside of Mexico City.

Residents destroyed a police car in opposition to the lock down.

One autonomous public agency in Mexico estimates that more than half of the population not earning enough money to cover basic needs.

It was the Latin America editor of The Wall Street Journal.

Just talk us through what your team found regarding the death certificates that you reviewed.

Well, as you said, this seems to be happening in countries around the world.

The problem in Mexico is that one way around this is to see above average deaths in a particular location over time.

So you can see that, for example, in the UK or the US A certain area had 10 or 20,000 excess deaths during a particular time.

That suggests that many of those might be related to code it.

The problem in Mexico is that those figures don't come out for a year, so we're not going to be able to use that as a proxy to tell how accurate the government duck camped is.

So we went to actual civil registries and saw 105 death certificates filed over two days, and what we found was pretty alarming.

In 64 of the cases, there was some kind of respiratory severe respiratory infection that caused the death, but only four were registered as cove, it as having been for sure, Kobe because they had done a test in 52 of those.

The doctor had written probable Cove it or likely Kobe it, But those didn't make it into the government count.

So, in summary, for every four official covert cases, there could be many, many more that are suspected coded but aren't getting tested by the government because of its limited testing ability and aren't being included in the main dot count.

But compared to other O E C D member nations who have around 23 tests per 1000 Mexico, it's not even 1/2 a person per 1000.

Mexico relies on what it calls a sentinel system of epidemiological surveillance, so they do fewer tests that try to get a representative sample around the country, and then they multiply that number by a certain factor.

So the deputy health minister has said that Mexico's 40,000 or so confirmed cases should be multiplied by at least eight to get a more of a realistic figure of how many cases there are.

And he's also admitted after our story came out, that many patients air coming in very ill by the time they get to the hospital, he said.

There's no time to test them before they die.

And he said, it's only rare when they take a postmortem sample to confirm that that person had coded.

So all the evidence points to the fact that Mexico is a far higher death rate than what's officially said.

So this idea that the health minister was saying that the curve has been flattened.

The evidence in the hospital disputes that totally yes.

And I think even the government's own figures don't really suggest that.

Part of the problem is that it takes as much as long as three weeks to actually count the dead from a particular day and enter them into the system.

So Mexico's official daily count is not how many people died yesterday, but how many people they counted yesterday that died over the past three weeks.

So that system, they're looking backwards 10 or 15 days so they don't even have an accurate count themselves of what they're looking at.

Meanwhile, we have more and more hospitals reporting that they're very close to capacity or at capacity on governments looking to reopen now.

There's obviously like everywhere in the world, a lot of pressure to reopen.

Mexico lost more than 1/2 a 1,000,000 jobs in April.

It was the worst jobs number on record for Mexico.

As you pointed out in your introduction, a lot of poor people here depend on day to day money to be so there's enormous political pressure to get things back open, even if that risks allowing the pandemic toe take hold again.

Thank you for so much for bringing this to our attention.

Don't love No, the Latin America editor for The Wall Street Journal.

Well, let's bring you up to date with what is happening in Venezuela.

President Nicolas Maduro has extended his country's locked down motions against Corona virus for a further 30 days.

Restrictions are having a huge impact on Venezuela's already struggling economy, with food prices soaring and gas shortages stopping doctors from reaching hospitals.

His gamma Malmo one of hundreds of queues for fuel across the country, Venezuelans desperate for petrol missed camp out into cars.

Halfway along this highway in the capital, I find Dr Bari's This is his sixth attempt to fill up in the last few weeks.

If the most rumor patrol you gonna point that?

Yeah, but, uh, but I guess we're leaving during quarantine accuses some of the only places where people can socialize a rare opportunity for human worms.

For Venezuelans, gratitude is more important than any social distancing advice.

Everyone covered this certain liters of fuel.

Barry's tells me he has a good reason not to leave empty handed.

I think it was your mulling national director.

But after very little sleep, he must now prepare to perform life saving surgery.

The Conseil always you Now, if the difficult, tricky via really operate the poor, literacy or a single hospitals are already short of medicine, some basic supplies, many of them There's not even water coming and so require the floor se present.

I remember almost a person to person Brazil, also marking another grim milestone.

On Tuesday, it recorded 881 deaths, its highest daily rise in deaths.

Experts are expecting cases to rise in the next few weeks before reaching a peak.

Despite that, President, Jebel Snow has been pushing to reopen the economy and has said that the spread of the virus is inevitable.

People here are increasingly frustrated, desperate to get back to some kind of normality.

So here in Sao Paulo, for example, the worst affected state in terms of numbers, less than half of the residents here continuing toe isolated home traffic jams are returning.

Authorities are trying toe counter that with more restrictive measures banning cars from circulating on certain days blocking major roads.

But it feels like a desperate attempt to reverse an inevitable course of spiraling death with a federal government that is not a strong leader.

 There's an increasingly fragmented approach to trying to tackle the crisis here in Brazil. 