In the middle of the coronavirus crisis, each country has taken different measures in order to face the pandemic. Each measure corresponded to the situation, the leadership style, and the amount of available resources. At the time of writing this text and according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, there is a total of 741,030 confirmed cases in 177 countries.
The United States is the country with the highest number of confirmed cases, with 143 thousand cases. At the beginning, President Donald Trump minimized the pandemic, to latter announce the travel restriction and the border closure for non-essential travels; nonetheless, due to the number of confirmed cases now, it seems that the measure was late. China´s case was completely different as a result of stricter measures, that included a quarantine, closing the city of Wuhan and the prohibition of outdoors displacement.
Another success case was South Korea’s, that implemented isolation measures, as well as an aggressive test application strategy. This allowed for the tracing of infected people and their close circle, resulting in better and more efficient virus contention. On its part, Singapore utilized medical detectives in order to find infected people’s close connections, to be able to isolate those individuals and quickly stop the transmission chain and to prevent the virus dissemination.
Brazil is the Latin American country with the highest number of cases (4,316). Despite this, President Jair Bolsonaro has criticized the actions implemented by other States, such as the school and business closings, and has compared COVID-19 with a simple flu. He even said that if he were infected, he would not be affected because of his athlete status. Contrary to this, in El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele ordered a 21 days national quarantine, the closure of borders to foreigners, and the retention to those who do not abide by the quarantine; in consequence, so far the Central American country only has 30 confirmed cases.
In Mexico, President López Obrador moved aside and allowed specialists to lead the way. This was important, because he allowed scientists to be the ones to lead the efforts and to inform the population, but it seems that there have been contradictory messages. The Undersecretary of Health, Hugo López Gatell, made an energetic call to the people to stay home, while the President was on tour around the country. Being a public figure with great recognition, it would be ideal for the President to follow these indications and stay home.
At present, we are in Phase 2, which includes the strategy of “Healthy Distance” (Sana Distancia), the suspension of non-essential activities, the closure of public places, such as movie theaters and sports arenas; in order to control and flatten the transmission curve. This is fundamental, because it would avoid the saturation of hospitals and would allow better medical attention for the population. According to the World Bank, Mexico has 1.5 hospital beds per 1000 citizens; if we compare this number with countries such as Germany (8.3), France (6.5), and even Spain (3.0) -with all of its problems-; we are left in a disadvantageous position, therefore the importance of staying home.
Currently there is an interesting discussion concerning the real dimension of Mexico’s problem, that started from the comparison of the number of cases between the Mexican and American border states. Tomás Pueyo (https://bit.ly/2QY8fhg) designed a model that calculates the cases based on the number of deceased people. In this way, it takes 17.3 days for an individual to die and the duplication rate of cases is 6.18. Therefore, if we establish a mortality rate of 1%, today there will be 13,944 infected people in the country. Likewise, Tomás Pueyo has been critical of Mexico’s situation due to the reduce level of testing and the lack of an early response strategy.
Finally, there is consensus on the fact that the country’s epidemiologists are more than capable, because of their experience with the influenza epidemic. Nonetheless, in the afternoon press conference health experts presented a graph with a flattened curve that gave the idea that the number of cases were stating to decrease, later it was informed that the graphic’s data corresponded to the onset of symptoms, instead of accumulated cases. Without a doubt, it is a positive thing that the information was clarified, but in these times, it is essential to be more responsible with the handling of information, because there is a risk of communicating wrongly or confusing the population.
* Arturo Ávila Anaya, IBN/B Analitycs President and National Security Expert by Harvard (NIS).
@ArturoAvila_mx