The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, 68, announced this Monday that he had tested positive for covid-19, for the second time in almost a year, after a test that was carried out this day after appearing flu in his usual daily press conference.
“I inform you that I am infected with # COVID19 and although the symptoms are mild, I will remain in isolation and will only do office work and communicate virtually until I get ahead,” he reported in a message on social networks.
In early December, the Mexican head of state, who had his full schedule, received a booster dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
The president explained that during the next few days the Secretary of the Interior, Adán Augusto López, will attend the morning press conferences that he offers from Monday to Friday.
The Mexican president, who suffers from hypertension and had a heart attack in 2013, has already suffered from the disease before, in January 2021.
On January 24, 2021, López Obrador announced that he was infected and returned to his activities on February 8.
On that occasion, the president, always very active, confined himself to the National Palace and the health authorities chose to keep his clinical condition secret and limited themselves to saying that he was almost “asymptomatic”, which led to all kinds of rumors.
Later, on February 5, López Obrador himself announced that he had already overcome the disease, but I am waiting for a medical check-up to reappear on February 8.
At that time, as López Obrador himself explained, he was treated by a team led by the Secretary of Health, Jorge Alcocer, and made up of an internist, a cardiologist, a doctor from the National Institute of Respiratory Diseases (INER), a military doctor of the Army and two of the National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition Salvador Zubirán.
López Obrador has received numerous criticisms from experts and opponents due to the management of the pandemic in Mexico.
In his third government report, López Obrador boasted of the “control of the pandemic” of covid-19, although Mexico has already exceeded 4 million cases and 300,000 deaths, the fifth-highest figure in the world.
This Monday, the Mexican president appeared in his conference with symptoms of a cold, a week after having been in contact with the Secretary of Economy, Tatiana Clouthier, who tested positive on Friday.
López Obrador had a raspy voice during his usual morning conference this Monday, something that caught the attention of journalists, who asked him about his health.
“Yes … I woke up hoarse, I’m going to take the test later, but I think it’s the flu,” the president minimized.
Last Friday, the Mexican president refused to take the test, because, as he clarified, he did not present symptoms, despite the fact that the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends otherwise.
“I have no symptoms, the truth is that I am very well, (…) when you have symptoms is when you have to take the test,” said the president last week.
Despite the suspicion of contagion, President López Obrador did not have a mask on and continued his morning intervention together with the consumer attorney Ricardo Sheffield, who also did not wear a mask.
This day, the head of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat), María Luisa Albores, also reported that she had tested positive for covid-19.
Mexico is experiencing a wave of infections after Christmas and with the arrival of the omicron variant, and last Saturday the country registered a new daily record of infections with 30,671 cases of covid-19.
In addition, the country surpassed the figure of 300,000 official deaths from covid-19 on Friday.
Until now Mexico accumulates, according to data from the Ministry of Health (SSA), a total of 4,125,388 cases, in addition to 300,334 total deaths, and is advancing in its vaccination campaign in which it has applied 151.94 million doses in little more than one year.
In Mexico, the third dose has already been applied to those over 60 years of age since the beginning of December, despite the fact that complete coverage of any of the other age groups has not been achieved.
