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Mexico has a macabre genre of crime reporting known as "la nota roja". Its content is oftentimes unnecessarily gruesome, but it sometimes fills an information void. Lately, la nota roja in Oaxaca has documented multiple instances of people with COVID symptoms dying in the street.
The spate of people in evident respiratory distress collapsing on the streets in Oaxaca is a recent phenomenon as lab-confirmed COVID-19 cases have doubled every two weeks. I put together a thread in Spanish on these "faintings" a couple of weeks ago. https://twitter.com/SYoungReports/status/1270905254599626756
More recently, as the main Oaxaca City area COVID hospitals have filled up to 100% capacity, people have been dying in private vehicles as desperate relatives try to find a hospital that will admit them. For example, this case from yesterday: https://imparcialoaxaca.mx/policiaca/442803/mujer-con-sintomas-de-covid-19-muere-camino-al-hospital/
Many households in Oaxaca are multi-generational. Contact tracing isn't part of the official strategy, but anecdotal evidence shows COVID is hitting big families. Some have lost multiple members and resorted to calling in favours to get a hospital bed. https://imparcialoaxaca.mx/oaxaca/442893/muere-en-espera-de-atencion-le-niegan-atencion-en-hospital/
It's hard to get an idea of the true dimensions of the COVID-19 outbreak in Oaxaca. Testing is very sparse and only lab-confirmed cases are included in the official statistics. With the main COVID hospitals full, getting a diagnosis or treatment becomes increasingly complicated.
People who do get a COVID test, but die before receiving the results, become "suspected COVID deaths" in the official death count. Those who died without having received a test become part of the "cifra negra" of excess mortality; a number which won't be made public until 2021.
In the meantime, price-gouging funeral agencies with ambulance-chaser tactics have proliferated to scam stunned families. It's gotten so bad and so common, the local office of the federal consumer protection agency has had to issue an alert to the public. http://www.nvinoticias.com/nota/150454/alerta-profeco-por-funerarias-patito-en-oaxaca-que-cobran-hasta-el-triple
Updating this thread with other examples of news coverage of people who have died in neither a hospital nor a home in Oaxaca from possible COVID.
After this thread made the rounds, I was given the "FaKe NeWs!" treatment, so consider this a collection of cited sources.
After this thread made the rounds, I was given the "FaKe NeWs!" treatment, so consider this a collection of cited sources.
