Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador devised ramped up vaccination efforts as the country currently chases time after Mexico's COVID deaths spiked to more than 200,000 on Thursday.

The recent 'loaned' vaccines of 1.7 million AstraZeneca shots by Mexico in the United States were set by the Mexican President to be distributed by the military, personnel of states, and local governments to be administered by health workers to avoid additional numbers in the death toll.

According to Associated Press, Mexico has reached 200,211 confirmed COVID deaths, as announced by the Mexican government. This puts them as the third country in the world to reach the 200,000-mark, trailing the United States and Brazil. But experts believed that the real death toll is actually closer to 300,000 as the country is currently experiencing a shortage in its testing.

One among funeral home workers in the country, Benigno Clemente Zarate, shared that the death toll is more and the numbers that the news reports are not correct as it is higher. The funeral home worker even stated that he was able to attend with multiple corpses of individuals who are living in just a single household.

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Real Death Toll Could Be Higher

Moreover, the government of Mexico stopped the publishing of the numbers regarding the excess deaths at the end of 2020. The last report regarding the said numbers was at the start of January, a month before the peak of the second wave's deaths.

Mexico City authorities published the excess deaths at the end of February, but only showed the percentage of the deaths through that date, and they also showed that the deaths of January were around 46% higher compared to the deaths in the city during the first wave last June. Even the Health Department of Mexico acknowledges that there were almost 220,000 estimated coronavirus deaths by the middle of March. However, the estimated number does not include the excess death reports and the number of individuals who died while at home, Bloomberg reported.

The city of Mexico was among the hardest-hit cities in the world. With 9 million individuals or only 7.1% of the total population of Mexico, the capital is associated with 19.3% of the total deaths of the country. Despite having better medical care facilities compared to the rest of Mexico, it had 430 confirmed COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 individuals, Reuters reported.

The target of the Mexican President, based on his statement on Thursday, is to get all individuals who are over 60 vaccinated with at least one dose by the end of April, as they try to avoid the possibility of another wave of infections in the country. López Obrador emphasized that he does not want the resurgence of the virus. But based on a GEA-ISA polling firm, their March 6-9 poll shows that only 52% out of 1,000 Mexicans are willing to get vaccinated, while the remaining percentage, 20% of them mentioned that they were not sure and 28% stated that they would not get vaccinated.

WATCH: Mexico's confirmed Covid-19 deaths surpass 200,000, while experts worry toll is much worse - FRANCE 24 English

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