Mexico City (AFP)

Mexico, the third most bereaved country after the United States and Brazil, will very soon cross the symbolic bar of 200,000 deaths from Covid-19.

Its death rate per 100,000 inhabitants is the 17th highest.

The Mexican Ministry of Health on Wednesday recorded 199,627 deaths from the coronavirus, the rate of deaths fluctuating between 200 and 1,000 per day.

The number of infections exceeds 2.2 million for 126 million inhabitants.

We are far from the initial forecasts of the government led by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who at the start of the epidemic predicted 8,000 deaths.

Reality helping, this estimate was subsequently quickly revised upwards with 35,000 and then 60,000 deaths, a scenario then qualified as "catastrophic".

"I imagined that it was going to be worse than what the government expected. But it was even more so," told AFP Alejandro Macias, an epidemiologist who led the strategy against the H1N1 virus in 2009.

Adriana Hernandez, widow of Carlos, the first official death from Covid in Mexico on March 18, 2020, remembers the disbelief of the authorities and her neighbors at the time, only a year ago.

"We were pointed out and threatened to burn our house ... But today, like the others, we are part of the statistics," she told AFP.

- The specter of the third wave -

The country, however, comes out of some nine weeks with figures giving hope for an improvement after the nightmare of January.

Records of deaths and contaminations were then broken, hospitals were saturated, especially in the capital and its metropolitan area.

But the scenario of a third wave cannot be ruled out, the Brazilian variant, a much more virulent mutation of SARS-CoV-2, circulating in many Latin American countries.

The Mexican authorities indicate that they have so far identified only about ten cases of the British variant and no more than three cases of the Brazilian variant, in particular in a woman who returned from Brazil at the end of January and immediately placed in solitary confinement.

Reluctant to make new forecasts, Hugo Lopez-Gatell, in charge of the government strategy against the coronavirus, is content to warn at the time when millions of Mexicans are preparing for the Easter holidays.

"There is no certainty, neither in Mexico, nor in the world, that the epidemic curve will gradually descend," he has just declared.

Alejandro Macias also does not rule out an acceleration of contaminations in the wake of these holidays, although religious ceremonies are limited.

He also raised the possibility that part of the Mexican population "developed a certain immunity".

- Vaccines drop by drop -

Accused of laxity by his opponents, the leftist president replies that Mexico was among the first countries in Latin America to launch a vaccination campaign on December 24, 2020.

His administration claims to have invested some $ 3.6 billion in the fight against the coronavirus.

"We are already at the bottom of the second wave. We must therefore take the opportunity to vaccinate in order to be protected in the event of a third wave," said AMLO this week, whose popularity is maintained.

But this vaccination is progressing slowly.

It concerns in priority the nursing staff and the objective is to cover all the elderly people by May.

In three months, nearly 10 million doses were administered.

"For there to be a real mass vaccination, we need ten million vaccines per month. We are not there. The vaccination program has derailed," said Alejandro Macias.

As for the economy, which experienced a historic drop of 8.5% in 2020 due to the pandemic, it appears to be rebounding.

This month, the central bank revised upward its growth estimate for 2021, to a range of 3.3% to 4.8%.

Despite the intensity of the second wave, the authorities avoided an almost total closure like the one decreed a year ago.

Many sectors of the economy remain active despite the restrictions.

"With more than half of Mexicans in the informal sector, it is difficult to tell them 'don't go out', people need money to live. But we must not let our guard down," says Alejandro Macias.

© 2021 AFP