Eighty new patients were treated Thursday and another 11 died, the highest numbers reported by the Yucatan Health Ministry since the crisis began.
That brings to 1,337 the number of confirmed positive cases, and 133 deaths, since the pandemic began. Official numbers don’t count asymptomatic cases, a quirk in federal reporting guidelines. The number of undetected cases in Yucatan is likely in the thousands, medical experts speculate.
Daily infections have ranged from the 30s to the 50s. On social media, a spike was predicted to follow El Día del Niño (Children’s Day) on April 30 and Día del Madre (Mother’s Day) on May 10, when families were tempted to gather and skirt social distancing guidelines. The incubation period for COVID-19, the illness caused by coronavirus, is thought to extend to 14 days, with a median time of four to five days from exposure to symptoms onset.
Of the new cases, 46 were in Mérida, nine were in Valladolid and four were in Umán.
Another 41 people recovered, bringing the total to 846, while 227 patients are in stable condition at home. But 131 are in bad enough shape to require hospitalization.
The youngest to perish was a 34-year-old man from Kopomá; he had no reported previous illnesses. He lived with nine people who presented no symptoms of the virus. A 75-year-old woman from Ticul with a history of hypertension and diabetes also died. She lived with 16 other people, four of whom have mild symptoms and have been put in isolation. The oldest to perish was an 88-year-old man, with hypertension, from Samahil. He lived with eight people who so far have no symptoms.
An Infogram user named Jose Ramos has been tracking the cases:
