The spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in San Antonio
(Photo: Reuters)

A month into the global quarantine, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador recently put into place preventive measures on the border between the U.S. and Mexico to reduce transmission of the highly contagious COVID-19. The U.S. - Mexico border is known to deal with approximately one million legal crossings daily.

Borders Still Open for Travel and Transport

Before this, Mexico was seeing the arrival of tourists from international flights like Europe and North America sans screening or quarantine. Governors from the Mexican foreign and interior ministers coerced last Wednesday the federal administration to implement more restrictions on flights coming from the U.S. bound for Mexico. 

As early as March 16, Mexican health authorities reported 82 positive cases of COVID-19, and by the end of the month, it rose to 1,000 cases. Now, even at this point, Lopez Obrador failed to take measures that would control or prevent the spread of COVID-19, the respiratory disease of the novel coronavirus.

Just two weeks prior, a group of 70 students took a chartered plane to Cabo San Lucas for a spring break trip, Austin Public Health Department said on Tuesday. The trip lasted from March 14 - 19, a period in which Mexico was still yet to be under any federal travel advisory.

As confirmed by the University of Texas at Austin, from the first 28 cases released in city reports, the number of these students tested positive for coronavirus climbed to 49 last Friday.

Last Thursday, Texas had more than 3,200 cases and 41 deaths from COVID-19. Schools closed, and restrictions were enforced on the southern state, which shares 1,200 miles of the border with Mexico.

Response to contain the virus was slow: In fact, the country reported its first case on February 27. In the emergency decree, practices were imposed that included suspending meetings with more than 50 people, maintaining proper hygiene like frequent handwashing, and observing "sneezing" etiquette.

Reddit user or sympathetic orange has developed an interactive map online that tracks live coronavirus cases in Mexico. The data is currently sourced from the Secretaria de Salud.

Check these out!

"Our Last Chance"

The Wednesday prior, 29 medics in IMSS General Hospital in Monclova were tested positive for COVID-19. The department of health claimed it started when one of the doctors treated in his private clinic a patient with the virus.

To encourage social distancing, Mexico launched a social media campaign led by a superhero, Susana Distancia. Her name is a play-on-words for "Your-Healthy Distance." But even that is too feeble to combat the rapid spread of the coronavirus.

Last March 30, Mexican Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard declared a state of emergency that demanded a halt to nonessential public, private and social activity. Additionally, health officials also encouraged immunocompromised people such as the elderly, pregnant women, and others with health risks to stay at home.

Similarly, the Undersecretariat of Prevention and Health Promotion Dr. Hugo Lopez-Gatell, who initially said that quarantine was an extreme measure of addressing the pandemic, recently urged Mexicans to follow the new restrictions.

"This is our last chance," he said.

Unprepared and ill-equipped for the pandemic

Initially, Lopez Obrador refused to enact orders that demanded Mexican citizens to practice social distancing and to stay indoors, claiming that it would endanger the livelihood of the poor and damage the economy of the country.

Last week, Lopez Obrador conceded to implementing stricter measures that would prevent the spread of the pandemic in the country, giving due consideration to how much the coronavirus could overwhelm local capacities.

As of Saturday, deaths from the virus were at 50. If the number of cases was to grow exponentially, hospitals in Mexico would not be able to accommodate the influx of patients.