Mexico reaches 100,000 COVID-19 deaths

Mexico passed the 100,000 mark in COVID-19 deaths Thursday, becoming only the fourth country, behind the United States, Brazil and India.

Assistant Health Secretary Hugo Lopez-Gatell said the milestone was unprecedented.

The announcement came less than a week after the country said it had topped 1 million registered coronavirus cases, though officials agree the number is probably much higher.

Mexico resembles a divided country, where some people are so unconcerned they won't wear masks, while others are so scared they descend into abject terror at the first sign of shortness of breath.

A lack of testing, insufficient hospitals in many areas and the fear of the ones that do exist, has created a fertile breeding ground for ignorance, suspicion and fear.

The government has opted to test cases with severe symptoms, performing around 2.5 million tests in a country of 130 million, and in some vulnerable neighborhoods, rely on the work of health outhreach workers.

Public health outreach worker Dulce María López nursed four members of her family through COVID-19, using on phone-in advice and medications from a doctor who was nursing his own relatives.

Lopez job involves handing out free surgical masks in the poverty-stricken Ampliación Magdalena neighborhood on Mexico City's rough east side.

She said that in her experience, some don't care, don't believe in the virus and many others are terrified of government hospitals.

"Our job was to tell the community that it is real, and we had to protect and help each other. But inside this community, there is plenty of ignorance in this situation," she said.

The supervisor at the community center in Ampliacion Magdalena, Daniel Lopez Gonzalez, said people in the area distrust the health authorities.

"People lack the knowledge of diseases or healthcare, when the new disease arrives (COVID-19), and adds up to the fact that they do not believe health or government authorities created a bomb," said Lopez Gonzalez.

Image Credits: AP