COVID Cases down for 10th Week / Tulum Airport Ready in 2023

10 consecutive weeks of decline. Mexico is marking 10 straight weeks with a decrease in COVID-19 cases, Deputy Minister of Health Hugo López-Gatell said. “We are in the 10th consecutive week,” he said during the presentation of the Health Pulse report. After a new methodology announced yesterday recorded 2,789 deaths in one day, López-Gatell explained that this figure was the result of adding early cases with pending results, some of which were reported at the start of the pandemic, so the daily average of 310 deaths remains the same. “According to the technical interpretation, there are fewer and fewer (deaths) per day,” he said. López-Gatell recalled that it has been 128 days since the “new normality” started in Mexico, after the strict initial period of isolation ended.

Tulum Airport will be inaugurated in 2023. President López Obrador said that the Army will be responsible for the construction of the new airport in Tulum, Quintana Roo, a project scheduled to start at the beginning of next year. “I believe we are going to start at the beginning of next year because we are inaugurating it in 2023. It is a fact that the project will be carried out,” López Obrador said. The president noted that the project will have a major impact on the development of southeast Mexico, since the Mayan Train will connect the airport network in the region. “Quintana Roo, Yucatan, Campeche and Chiapas will be integrated. This is development for the southeast,” he said. The Army is also carrying out the construction of the new Santa Lucia Airport.

Hurricane Delta preparedness. Minister of the Navy (Semar) Rafael Ojeda Durán and Civil Protection head Laura Velázquez will travel to Quintana Roo to prepare for Hurricane Delta, President López Obrador said. “We have been communicating with the governor since yesterday,” he said and noted that the armed forces’ relief program, the DN-III Plan, will be applied using 5,000 officials. “Hopefully, the hurricane will lose strength or change its course. According to the predictions, it will hit hard tonight and until Wednesday morning. We have all day to prepare,” he said.

Trust beneficiaries have nothing to fear. President López Obrador said that beneficiaries of trusts that will be terminated will receive their regular payments in less than one month, after the closure of over 100 trusts was finally authorized last week. “Those who are receiving support will not have to wait even a month,” he said. The president noted that people affected by the new scheme need to understand why he decided to implement these changes. He said that a broad corruption network with scores of people who didn’t deserve payments had been detected.

A scholarship, the path to presidency. A scholarship allowed him to continue his studies and then become president of the republic, President López Obrador said. “I am here, I became president because I studied with a scholarship. Without it, I would not have finished school,” he said while defending his administration’s distribution of scholarships. The president said that he lived in a house with 80 other people, where they got food and support, and that it was a miracle that he finished school. López Obrador noted that the government is obliged to guarantee that the country's population can continue studying, since this is “a right, not a privilege.”

Reform against ‘neoliberal’ outsourcing. President López Obrador said that an initiative against outsourced contracting is being prepared, calling the practice a “vice” and “rotten fruit” from the neoliberal period. “This form of contracting is also a rotten fruit from the neoliberal period. There is a proposal, which is a bit similar to what we did with the Afores (retirement funds). Without implementing any extreme decisions, we are going to protect workers and correct those vices,” he said.

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Click HERE for full transcript in Spanish