Mexican president contracts COVID-19 after deadliest week of pandemic

Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Sunday he had tested positive for COVID-19 amid the country’s deadliest week yet in the coronavirus pandemic, which has pushed the health system of the Mexican capital to its limits, Reuters reports.

The 67-year-old president, who was a heavy smoker until suffering a major heart attack in 2013, said in a tweet that his symptoms were light and he was receiving treatment.

“As always, I am optimistic,” said Lopez Obrador, who has resisted wearing a face mask in public since the virus reached Mexico over 10 months ago.

The president, who is back in Mexico City after a three-day visit to parts of northern and central Mexico, said he would continue working, and still planned to take part in a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday morning.

But the veteran leftist will step back from his regular public schedule, which has dominated the country’s political life since he first took office in December 2018.

Critics have railed incessantly against his management of the health crisis, but despite a mounting toll of nearly 150,000 dead, his popularity has risen during the pandemic, according a daily tracking poll by polling firm Consulta Mitofsky.

The president has maintained a busy agenda, meeting his security cabinet at 6 a.m. every morning then holding daily news conferences of two hours or more from 7 a.m. At the weekends, he often tours the country, just as he did when in opposition.

 
Several close aides have contracted the virus in the past few months, but he has always insisted that he is in good health and has taken care of himself since the 2013 heart attack, after which he quit smoking.

“Fortunately, the president is stable at the moment, the symptoms are mild,” Jose Luis Alomia, a senior Mexican health official told a daily news conference shortly after Lopez Obrador announced he had the virus.

Specialists were attending the president, Alomia said.

The health ministry said officials were reviewing who the president had been in contact with in the past few days and that most of them would self-isolate. Economy Minister Tatiana Clouthier was isolating, a spokeswoman said.

Lopez Obrador made an uncertain start to the pandemic, which has led to the fourth-highest death toll worldwide in Mexico. Initially the president urged people to hug each other and to keep going out. Later, he told them to stay at home.