Mexico reports 13,734 new cases of COVID-19, a record during the pandemic

Mexico recorded 13,734 new cases of the coronavirus in the last 24 hours, the highest figure during the pandemic, for a total of 1,493,569 confirmed cases, Ministry of Health authorities reported Thursday.

For the second day in a row, the number of infections is the highest reported in Mexico since the pandemic began on February 28, 2020, after 13,345 new cases were reported yesterday.

The record of infections in recent weeks indicates that on Friday the country will reach 1.5 million infections. In addition, 1,044 new deaths were counted, bringing the death toll to 131,031.

With the number of deaths, it is the first time in Mexico that for three consecutive days more than 1,000 deaths have been recorded, with 1,065, 1,165 and 1,044, respectively.

With these numbers, Mexico remains the fourth country in the world with the most deaths from the pandemic, behind the United States, Brazil and India, according to Johns Hopkins University. Furthermore, according to this same institution, Mexico is the thirteenth country in the world in terms of the number of infections.

Since the beginning of the pandemic in Mexico, 3,781,625 patients have been studied with a positivity index of 42%, informed the Director of Health Promotion of Mexico, Ricardo Cortés Alcalá, in a press conference in Mexico City.

Among the patients studied, 1,493,569 tested positive for the virus infection, 1,875,639 tested negative and 412,417 remain suspicious. In addition, the official highlighted that 1,127,471 patients are classified as recovered.

The projections of the Mexican authorities indicate that there are an estimated 1,682,874 cases in the country and they pointed out that 5% of them, corresponding to 81,652, are those that represent the active epidemic in the country, as they are patients who developed their symptoms in the last 14 days.

He noted that, to date, there is a total of 31,276 beds for general care, of which 17,208 are occupied and 14,068 are available, while the number of ventilator beds is 10,245 with 5,499 available and 4,746 occupied.

The states with the highest occupancy of ventilator beds are Mexico City (84%) and the State of Mexico (79%), the focus of the pandemic in the country.

At the conference, it was reported that, in Mexico, 58,402 people who are part of the medical staff that treats patients with COVID-19 in the metropolitan area of Mexico City and in the northern states of Coahuila and Nuevo León have been vaccinated so far.

This Thursday, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador revealed that government officials travelled to Argentina to explore bringing the Russian Sputnik V vaccine to be applied in the country.

Mexico is two weeks away from starting its vaccination, having received a total of around 100,000 doses of the antidote from Pfizer and BioNTech.

The President boasted at his press conference that "Mexico is the first place in Latin America" in vaccination, but that there is an urgent need to accelerate immunization to meet its promise to cover the immunization of medical personnel by the end of January and the 15 million adults over 60 by March.

Mexico aims to immunise its nearly 130 million inhabitants by March 2022 and has contracts for 34.4 million doses from the US-based Pfizer, 77.4 million from the UK-based AstraZeneca, 35 million from China's CanSino and 34.4 million from the World Health Organization's (WHO) Covax platform.