On Monday morning, the President was still carefree. Andrés Manuel López Obrador stood at the lectern in his government palace in Mexico City, with glassy eyes and a hoarse voice. “I think it’s flu,” he said, but well, he’ll get tested just in case. Almost two hours Mexico’s head of state spoke to journalists on Monday, it was about fuel prices, building an airport, relations with Nicaragua. He wasn’t wearing a mask. In the evening, López Obrador finally had to admit that he had made a mistake. “I will inform you that I am infected with # Covid19 and even if the symptoms are only mild, I will remain in quarantine.”
López Obrador is now a president in the home office, and in addition to some recovery wishes, he has to listen to fierce criticism. With his appearance at the press conference and a meeting he previously held with his Agriculture Minister, he was doing exactly the opposite of what the Corona rules dictate to Mexicans. As soon as symptoms appear, they should go into quarantine and not wait for a test. The conservative opposition politician Kenya López said, for example, that the president was setting a false example that would “cost many lives”. The government must finally admit that there is a health emergency in Mexico.
Many Mexicans like their president because of his unpretentious demeanor – instead of a luxury limousine, he drives an old VW Jetta – and his left-wing redistribution policy. However, his corona policy is less popular. Mexico became the fifth country in the world to surpass the 300,000 corona death mark last week – even though very little is tested. After analyzing the death certificates, the government estimates the actual number of deaths to be around 460,000.
The Omicron variant is now also on the advance in Mexico, new infections rose by 186 percent in the past week, on Saturday the country recorded the most new infections within one day since the beginning of the pandemic. López Obrador downplayed the danger. Omikron was “just a little bit of Covid,” he said. According to initial findings, the variant leads to less severe courses. However, experts around the world are warning that massive numbers of infections still overload hospitals and can cost many lives.
López Obrador also justifies his lax corona policy by not wanting to completely stall the economy. The pandemic led to a severe slump in Mexico, and the country is heavily dependent on foreign trade, especially with the United States. The president never decreed a nationwide lockdown or border closings. The economy is now recovering, but has not yet reached pre-crisis levels. The opposition counters López Obrador that it is not about shutting down the economy, but about more efficient corona measures such as more tests and vaccinations. 56 percent of the approximately 126 million Mexicans are considered fully vaccinated.
The corona infection that Mexico’s president got in the past few days is already his second. He fell ill for the first time in January of last year, and after 15 days of absence, he finally reappeared in public at the beginning of February. His interior minister, Adán Augusto López Hernández, is said to represent him at face-to-face meetings until his recent recovery.