Mexico ranked fourth worldwide in the number of “excess deaths” during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to an independent commission installed in February to examine how Mexico managed the global health emergency.
The term “excess deaths” refers to the number of deaths from all causes that occurred above and beyond what would have been expected under “normal” conditions.
Mexico had 808,000 deaths above the expected figure for the period, said the Comisión Especial sobre la Pandemia de Covid-19, a body of 17 academics and specialists from various disciplines. Only Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia had more, the commission said.
Describing the pandemic as the “greatest humanitarian catastrophe that the country has experienced in a century,” commission coordinator Mariano Sánchez said around 40 percent of the deaths in Mexico could be attributable to “poor government management and a failure to attend to the emergency,” rather than the condition of Mexico’s health system, or the health of its population.
Mariano Sánchez said the aim of the non-politically affiliated commission is not to find scapegoats but to learn from the mistakes made, extract relevant lessons and know how to act in future emergencies.
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