Cyclone Nisarga approaches Mumbai.
Indian authorities began evacuating residents around Mumbai on Tuesday
in preparation for a cyclone due to make landfall today. The India
Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Tuesday that a depression in Arabian
Sea “is very likely to intensify into a cyclonic storm during next 12 hours, and
further into a severe cyclonic storm during subsequent 12 hours.”
It’s the
second major cyclone in two weeks to hit India after Cyclone Amphan made
landfall in West Bengal and neighboring Bangladesh, killing over 100 people.
Mexico
Coronavirus Cases Spike, Suggesting an Underreported Outbreak
On Tuesday
Carissa Etienne, the World Health Organization’s regional director for the
Americas warned that the coronavirus pandemic in the
Western Hemisphere was only likely to get worse, as the effects of economic
inequality exacerbate a public health crisis.
The number of
coronavirus cases in the United States and Brazil—which together account for
over one-third of cases worldwide—has grabbed headlines, but it’s in Mexico
where the pandemic could find its next epicenter.
On Tuesday,
Mexico’s health ministry reported 3,891 new coronavirus cases, its highest
daily number since the outbreak began. A senior health official has sought to
play down the increase. “The coronavirus epidemic is at its maximum level of
intensity,” Hugo Lopez-Gatell, Mexico’s assistant health secretary and a leader
in the government response, said on Tuesday. At over 10,000, the number of
recorded deaths from coronavirus in Mexico is the third-highest in the
Americas, behind United States and Brazil.
No testing, no
data. But what should be troubling for Mexico is the lack of necessary
data to track the progress of the virus—it has one of the lowest testing rates in all of Latin America.
“The Mexican
government, unlike many and perhaps most governments, has declared that its
epidemiological policy has no intention of counting each and every case,”
López-Gatell, told the Associated Press. “We are not
interested in it, because it is useless, costly and not feasible to test
everybody in the country.” Mexico has instead focused on increasing the number
of hospital beds available to treat patients when they fall ill.
Mourning
in Mexico. In Foreign
Policy, Maya Averbuch reported from the cemeteries and crematoriums
of Mexico City and spoke with the grieving families who are still not being
told whether their loved ones died of the coronavirus. “As a dispute has
unfolded over Mexico’s management of the crisis, families are asking not for
answers about how many overall deaths there might be, but for closure in their
specific cases,” she writes.
