Merida, Yucatan — The Sunday-morning Biciruta community bike ride, Mérida en Domingo at the Plaza Grande, Noche Mexicana at the remate, Serenata at Parque Santa Lucía, Noche de Culturas, Semana Meridana, la Vaquería de los Lunes and the Pok Ta Pok Maya ball game demonstration at the Cathedral are all the latest coronavirus casualties.
Hennessy’s Irish Pub, a restaurant that is central to the expat community, announced that it was withdrawing St. Patrick’s Day celebrations on Tuesday. While they will remain open, and serve corned beef and cabbage, “we must avoid creating an event that would be heavily crowded and not allow the social distance required for this infectious disease to pass quickly and undetected in our community,” said proprietor Sean Hennessy.
The Merida English Library canceled its weekly events — Conversaciones Con Amigos, House & Garden tours, the lecture series, MEL Night and Saturday Storytime — as of Wednesday and until further notice. And Taste of Merida, a major yearly fundraiser for Fundacion BAI, has been postponed until October.
Yucatan registered its first coronavirus case this week, a 57-year local woman who had recently traveled to Spain. She is recovering at home in isolation.
Before that, the state bit the bullet and rescheduled a huge international trade show at the Siglo XXI convention center that would have drawn visitors from dozens of countries.
Health checkpoints will be installed today at the zoos, public community and senior citizen centers, libraries and the markets.
Antibacterial gel will be available in libraries and city facilities, where posters in Spanish and Mayan on prevention measures have already been hung.
Citizens were advised to avoid face-to-face interactions and to emphasize online services.
State health officials earlier announced health protocols in schools, airports and highways.
Mexico has so far confirmed 15 cases of coronavirus with no deaths, a statistics many see with skepticism after comparing those numbers with the U.S. and Canada’s.
As of Saturday morning, the United States registered 2,340 coronavirus patients while Canada’s federal government was reporting 200 confirmed cases.
Francisco Moreno Sánchez, the head of internal medicine at ABC Hospital in Mexico City, told local media Wednesday that he’s worried about the lack of diagnostic testing in the country and fears there are “many more cases” circulating undetected.
The World Health Organization has registered over 148,900 cases of COVID-19 coronavirus worldwide with 5,547 confirmed deaths.
