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Mexico remains the worst country to be in during the coronavirus pandemic, according to an updated analysis by the Bloomberg news agency.
On a monthly basis since November, Bloomberg has assessed 53 countries with savings of over US $ 200 billion to determine where the virus has been treated most effectively with the least disruption to business and society.
It uses 10 different indicators to assess the coronavirus situation in each country, including growth in virus cases, overall death rate, testing capacity, capacity of local health system, impact of restrictions related to viruses on the economy and freedom of movement. .
For its latest analysis – which was released on Monday – Bloomberg introduced an 11th indicator to assess each country’s progress in administering Covid-19 vaccines.
The news agency uses the different indicators to calculate a “Covid resilience” score for each country.
Mexico ranked 53rd in the November and December analyzes and maintained this unenviable position in the January assessment. Not only that, his score went down.
Covid’s resilience score was only 30.8 out of 100, down 6.8 points from November. The second lowest ranked country – South Africa – scored seven points higher than Mexico.
Mexico has the highest case fatality rate among 53 countries with a rate of 7.5 deaths per 100 confirmed cases over the past month. (Mexico’s overall case fatality rate is 8.5, the highest among the 20 countries currently most affected by Covid-19, according to Johns Hopkins University.)
It also has the highest positivity rate, with 41.1% of Covid-19 tests coming back positive.
“A high rate of positive tests indicates that a government is only testing the sickest patients and that there are high levels of undetected infection in the community,” Bloomberg said.
The federal government, which last year described mass testing as unnecessary and expensive, has been widely criticized for not testing more.
Other indicators that contributed to Mexico’s score included 287 cases per 100,000 population in the past month; 1,156 deaths from Covid-19 per 1 million inhabitants; 0.43 doses of vaccine administered per 100 people; and a GDP growth forecast of 3.5% for 2021.
Bloomberg said Mexico has vaccination agreements to cover 119% of the Mexican population (just over 126 million, according to recently released census results), but the supply is currently extremely limited.
For comparison, Canada and the UK have vaccine deals to cover over 300% of their population, while New Zealand and Australia have deals to cover more than double the number of residents. .
New Zealand, which has been extremely successful in controlling the coronavirus, has been ranked by Bloomberg as the best place to be during the pandemic with a Covid resilience score of 76.8. Singapore ranks second, followed by Australia, Taiwan, China, Norway, Finland, Japan, Hong Kong and Vietnam.
Mexico’s North American trading partners, Canada and the United States, rank 13th and 35th, respectively.
The 10 lowest ranked countries were, in order, Mexico, South Africa, Colombia, Czech Republic, Argentina, Nigeria, Egypt, Brazil, Pakistan and Iran .
Bloomberg acknowledged that some countries have started vaccinating citizens against Covid-19, but said that “the largest global vaccination campaign in living memory has yet to reach a point where it is causing significant changes in … [the] Covid resilience ranking. “
“The speed with which vaccinations can reduce the number of deaths and their effectiveness against new, rapidly spreading variants will be the focus of attention in February, when we update the Covid Resilience Rankings again,” a said the news agency.
Noting the poor performance of the United States, Brazil and Mexico in the fight against the pandemic, Bloomberg said former US President Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and President López Obrador – who announced on Sunday that he had tested positive for Covid-19 – all “repeatedly downplayed the coronavirus threat.
Cynthia Arnson, Latin American program director of Washington DC think tank, the Wilson Center, said the approach of “jumper” leadership in some Latin American countries, in addition to a lack of safety nets social and strong public health systems, has exacerbated the coronavirus crisis in the region.
Bloomberg noted that Latin America is the most urbanized region in the world and that social distancing is difficult for many people because they live in conditions of overcrowding.
“The high proportion of people who depend on informal work and daily wages means that few are willing to stay at home,” he added.
The news agency also said that data from the International Monetary Fund shows that most Latin American countries will not return to pre-pandemic growth levels until 2023 and that per capita income will not recover until. 2025, which is “later than anywhere else”.
On an annual basis, the Mexican economy fell almost 20% in the second quarter of 2020 and 8.6% in the third quarter.
Coronavirus restrictions continue to dampen Mexico’s economy, especially in the 10 states currently painted red on the federal government’s red light map. Mexico City, an economic powerhouse, is among the entities facing red light restrictions.
An easing of restrictions in the capital and several other states seems unlikely in the short term as Mexico faces its worst month of the pandemic in terms of new cases and deaths from Covid-19. More than 88% of general care hospital beds in Mexico City are currently occupied by patients with coronavirus.
The national death toll topped 150,000 on Monday with an additional 659 deaths reported and now stands at 150,273, the fourth highest total in the world.
The number of accumulated cases rose to 1.77 million on Monday with 8,521 new cases registered. Mexico ranks 13th in the world for the number of cases despite the low detection rate here.
Mexico News Daily
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