“Perhaps we should have stopped sales of mouthguards to China in February” – says Lopez-Gatell

In an interview with Richard Ensor, Mexico’s correspondent for The Economist, the official says it is not true that the material is being repurchased at 30 times its cost. “It’s less,” he says.

Hugo Lopez-Gatell, undersecretary of health, regretted that in Mexico, they sold masks to China in February when the epidemic was gaining strength in China, although he explained that a state of emergency had not yet been declared in our country at that time.

Reporter Richard Ensor, correspondent for The Economist, published a lengthy interview with López-Gatell on the Medium platform entitled “A talk with the coronavirus czar in Mexico,” in which he tells the official that Mexico sold a large number of masks to China in February, “and now they buy the same masks at 30 times their cost”.

He asks, “Should those sales have been stopped?”
“In retrospect, maybe we should have done it. We didn’t. There was no consideration of ‘we have to’ and China had the need, China had the power, that is, to locate the supplies,” the Mexican official said.

He added that stopping the sale of masks would have meant making extremely disruptive decisions in February, such as declaring a state of emergency in Mexico by the Covid-19 at the time.

That, he said, “would have affected the social, economic, and political dynamics entirely.

He also pointed out that they are not repurchased at 30 times their cost, but rather at less. Nor does it detail or clarify whether the sales were made by the Mexican government or by private Mexican companies.

It was not until the end of February that the first case of coronavirus was registered in Mexico.

Columnist Carlos Loret criticized this issue in his Twitter account… “We don’t have mouthpieces and gloves because Mexico sold them to China in February! When the pandemic was already known! In an interview, the undersecretary @lopezgatell acknowledges this and admits that they are now having to buy them back from China at a price several times higher

No tenemos cubrebocas y guantes porque México se los vendió a China ¡en febrero! ¡Cuando ya se sabía de la pandemia! En entrevista lo reconoce el subsecretario @lopezgatell y admite que ahora están teniéndolas que re-comprar a China a un precio varias veces más caro

— Carlos Loret de Mola (@CarlosLoret) April 7, 2020

Today, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that a shipment of complementary medical equipment is coming back from Shanghai to Mexico to deal with the Covid-19.

Ya despegó de Shangai rumbo a México el primer vuelo con equipo médico complementario para hacer frente al COVID-19. El cargamento servirá para proteger mejor a los trabajadores de la salud. Hoy en su día muchas felicidades!!!!! pic.twitter.com/cORi3YmBZh

— Marcelo Ebrard C. (@m_ebrard) April 7, 2020

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