There was little doubt that Mexico was in the grip of a crisis.
This was evident in the lines of people stretching city blocks to refill oxygen tanks. In the cry of ambulance sirens. In the plumes of smoke that blow out of crematoria late at night.
But lately, the creeping feeling that the coronavirus is everywhere has been magnified by the news that three of the most powerful men in the country are now sick with COVID-19.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (67), a center-left populist known to AMLO by his legion of supporters, said on Sunday that he had tested positive for the virus and isolated himself in his apartment in the National Palace in Mexico with ‘mild symptoms’.
On Monday, the son of Carlos Slim, an 80-year-old telecommunications executive and the richest man in Mexico, reported that his father had been suffering from COVID-19 for a week and was being treated in a hospital.
It was an avalanche of shocking news for a country that has been closely monitoring the condition of Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera, a 78-year-old retired archbishop who has been in intensive care since January 12.
The illness of three men representing the country’s traditional mags – church, state and trade – is a powerful reminder of how bad things have become in Mexico.
The country recorded nearly 150,000 official COVID-19 deaths – the fourth highest death toll in the world. Yet officials acknowledge that the true score is much higher. Mexico counted 274,486 more deaths of all kinds in 2020 than in a normal year, and health experts said the vast majority were likely to be due to the pandemic.
The current increase in business seems to be linked to the Christmas holidays, when families gathered in large groups, despite requests from health authorities. In those days, hospitals in several of the largest cities in the country were almost capacity, and many had to turn down emergency patients.
Some analysts have said they hope the infestation of high-ranking Mexicans is the necessary wake-up call.
“Yesterday, the president, today the richest and most successful businessman in Mexico,” Gabriel Guerra Castellanos, a former diplomat and political analyst, said on Twitter. “This is in addition to the nearly 1,800,000 cases officially confirmed in our country so far. It is clear that serious self-criticism and an urgent rethinking of strategy are needed.”
The government of López Obrador has been criticized worldwide for its poor response to the pandemic. Mexico refused to invest in widespread tests, spreading the contamination unnoticed, and the president chose not to wear a mask even in public.
He announced that he had tested positive for COVID-19 late Sunday shortly after returning to Mexico City from a multi-state tour, where he held several meetings for more than three days and attended two events.
Local media cite unnamed sources in his government who say López Obrador fell ill with flu-like symptoms on Saturday and was given a COVID-19 test that day. Many criticized his decision to take a commercial Aeromexico flight home the next day, even though he was already feeling ill.
The president has repeatedly underestimated the risks of the virus. In June, he told reporters that good moral behavior is one of the tricks to not getting sick. “No lying, no stealing, no betrayal, it helps a lot not to get coronavirus,” he said.
Smart, on the other hand, was a leading crusader against the virus. He insisted on an agreement to supply vaccines in Latin America, and his charity was licensed by AstraZeneca to supply 150 million doses of vaccine to the region.
Slim was once considered the richest man in the world, although he is now number 21 on the Forbes billionaire list, with an estimated fortune of about $ 60 billion.
Rivera was Mexico’s leading Catholic leader before retiring in 2017.
A church spokesman said the former archbishop was in a stable condition in a ventilator at a hospital in Mexico City. He added that Rivera received his last rituals.
This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.