Mexico Runs Out Of Death Certificates Due To High COVID-19 Death Toll

Mexico has ordered the printing of 1.1 million additional death certificates as the country runs out of the essential document due to the high death toll brought by COVID-19. Mexico deputy health minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell reported on Sunday that the higher-than-normal deaths in the country have led to a shortage of death certificates in working-class communities of Mexico City and Baja California.

“I receive calls from doctors almost daily asking me to help them to get more death certificates,” said State of Mexico’s health services coordinator Carlos Aranza. “We are going through a period of great scarcity,” he added.

Lopez-Gatell, who also leads Mexico’s COVID-19 response, said the shortage mirrors the depth of the pandemic in Mexico, which ranks fourth globally in COVID-19 deaths. Health experts say the real death toll in the country is likely far higher than the current 66,000 due to limited testing. The assessment was supported on Sunday by new government figures showing that deaths in Mexico from March to August from all causes were 122,765 more than the number of deaths expected in a normal year.

Lopez-Gatell revealed that authorities had been working for the past two to three weeks to redistribute death certificates from areas with more stocks. “They almost ran out in Mexico City,” he said. “It has been a pretty intense job,” he added.

Meanwhile, the shortage in death certificates has impeded the work of funeral homes and doctors and has contributed to the anxiety of families unable to hold funeral services for their lost loved ones without the official document. Some households even+p4 keep the corpses of their departed relatives at home while some members of the family travel across the city to find doctors who can provide death certificates.

“Some families had corpses at home for four to five days,” said La Piedad Funeral Home director Eduardo Salinas.

Laura Rebollar, whose father-in-law also died of COVID-19, said the situation only increases the COVID-19 risk in communities as families are forced to let infected corpses linger around for too long. “It’s dangerous for all of us,” she said. “They should cremate the bodies immediately.”