MEXICO CITY (AP) – Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s spokesman has tested positive for the coronavirus, he announced Sunday, the same day the country reported its first case of a potentially more contagious variant of coronavirus that is spreading in Gran Brittany.
Spokesperson Jesús Ramírez Cuevas wrote on Twitter: “I report that I tested positive for Covid-19. I am in good health and I will be working from home following all health protocols ”. It was not stated whether the president had been tested.
Ramírez Cuevas is close to López Obrador, frequently handing him documents or accompanying him on his travels. The president is 67 years old and has hypertension, but he almost never wears a mask.
López Obrador toured the Pacific port of Manzanillo on Sunday and delivered a speech without a mask, as he usually does.
On the same day, health authorities in the northern state of Tamaulipas detected a case of the British variant, known as B.1.1.7, which has also been found in the United States, Canada, Italy, India and the United Arab Emirates. United.
British scientists have said that it could be more contagious than previously identified strains.
The case was detected in a 56-year-old man who arrived on December 29 at an airport in the northern city of Matamoros on a flight from Mexico City, the Tamaulipas health department said.
Subsequently, the federal health authorities indicated that the individual was a British citizen who traveled from Amsterdam to the Mexican capital, and then took the flight to Matamoros, where he apparently had to carry out a work assignment. You were tested only because your company required it; Mexico does very little.
When tested, the man had no symptoms, but has been hospitalized and on a respirator.
Thirty-one of the people on board the flight had shown no symptoms and two others tested negative, authorities said, but 12 more could not be located.
The country reported about 10,000 new confirmed cases of coronavirus nationwide on Sunday and approximately 500 more deaths. Hospitals in Mexico City, the nation’s current epicenter of the pandemic, are 92% occupied.
Only about 6,320 people were vaccinated in Mexico on Sunday, for a total of 107,250 so far.
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