Updates on Coronavirus in Mexico and the Border Region:

Chihuahua Suffering Like New Mexico From the Same Supply Shortages for Testing

 for Coronavirus
 

Chihuahua:  500 Completed Swabs of Possible Coronavirus Victims, Still Waiting for Testing Materials

El Heraldo (click here) today reports 500 swabs have been taken from possible coronavirus victims and are ready for evaluation.  But health officials in Chihuahua have been unable to obtain supplies from the federal government of the reagents needed to evaluate the tests as positive or negative.  Chihuahua had completed only about 42 tests as of yesterday.  State officials had asked for these materials two months ago, according to Dr. Leticia Ruiz González, sub-director of Preventive Medicine and Health Advocacy in the Chihuahua state Department of Health.

New Mexico:  Problems Obtaining Test Supplies Similar to Those of Chihuahua

Three days ago (click here for KOAT report) Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham complained about the lack of responsiveness from the federal government among other areas in providing the reagents needed to perform tests on samples taken from patients.  “They have made it incredibly complicated to access the swabbing at the front end and the reagents at the back end, she said."  In spite of these problems New Mexico has been able to test 8513 persons, thanks in part to cooperation between the state and public and private scientific community--which is in some cases world-class.

Comment:  With populations of 3.5 million in Chihuahua, 2.1 million in New Mexico, and nearly 2.5 million people in the Paso del Norte, the border region community is acting blindly, without an understanding of the current local spread of what looms as the most dangerous pandemic in a century.  This is not because our local officials in this community failed, but because our federal governments failed to deliver what our tax dollars paid them to deliver.  The federal governments of the two countries for all practical purposes abandoned the US-Mexico Border Health Commission, formed twenty years ago precisely to prepare for health issues that spanned the border region.  And as the coronavirus crisis was predictably approaching North America after the massive outbreak in China, the presidents of both countries went out of their way publicly to ignore the urgent pleas of the health and scientific communities of Mexico and the US.

This is not to mention the nearly half-billion people who pay taxes to the federal government in Mexico and the US combined, and have every right to expect far better from their governments.