The Health Ministry estimates there are 26,000 COVID-19 cases in the country. This means that for every case that has been confirmed there are 8 other cases that haven’t been detected by the health system because the person didn’t see a doctor or because they didn’t get tested for coronavirus .
During a news conference, Dr. Hugo López-Gatell , Mexico’s COVID-19 czar, explained the numbers were obtained through the Sentinel Surveillance technique, a scientific method used to monitor the“rate of occurrence of specific conditions to assess the stability or change in health levels of a population. It is also the study of disease rates in a specific cohort such as in a geographic area or population subgroup to estimate trends in a larger population.”
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Therefore, Mexico has 3,181 confirmed COVID-19 cases; 174 coronavirus-related deaths , and an estimated 26,174 COVID-19 cases.
Dr. López-Gatell explained Mexican authorities are using the Sentinel Surveillance method, which was developed by the U.S. , the World Health Organization , and the Pan American Health Organization in 1995.
The Sentinel Surveillance program has allowed the country to understand the way COVID-19 behaves and aid in the process to make decisions to prevent and control the disease.
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