Last Updated on March 17, 2020
For the first time in the conversation to close the US-Mexico boarder, Mexico is being urged by their own health officials to close the border to prevent the spread of COVID-19 into Mexico.
“If it were technically necessary, we would consider mechanisms of restriction or stronger surveillance,” says Mexico’s Health minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell, adding, “Mexico wouldn’t bring the virus to the United States, rather the United States would bring it here” in a press conference that took place last Friday.
With more that 2,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, Mexican health officials are convinced that the way to keep their number low is to close the border, and discontinue travel into Mexico from the United States.
Unlike many other Latin American countries, in Mexico, which only has 16 total COVID-19 cases confirmed and no deaths as of the time this article is published, hasn’t taken as many measures to close schools or prevent entry into places with reports of higher levels coronavirus cases in the world. The only announced closure in Mexico is the private Tecnologico de Monterrey University, who will be suspending academic classes starting next week for an undetermined amount of time.
President Donald J. Trump has had very little to say on the state of the coronavirus in Mexico. The Unites States had already been limiting travel from other countries that were reporting higher levels of infection, instituting state-level curfews and shut downs of highly populated places. Now it appears that the health officials in Mexico are finally on board with a platform that many conservatives have been behind since long before the campaign of President Trump- close our US- Mexican border.
“To this point, and because we have had a very strong border policy, we have had 40 deaths related to CoronaVirus,” President Trump said in a tweet. “If we had weak or open borders, that number would be many times higher!”
The Trump Administration has on many occasions talked about the problems of disease spreading due to mass illegal immigration.
