Initial spread of the COVID-19 pandemic among the indigenous population in México

Authors

  • Jorge Horbath

Abstract

The Article seeks to show the process of spread of contagion and deaths that the indigenous population has suffered as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, during the first months of contagion established as the first stage of the pandemic. Using the information released on May 22, 2020 from the Undersecretariat of Epidemiology of the Ministry of Health that includes the question of indigenous language for the patients attended by the health system up to that date are indigenous or not, it is carried out a descriptive statistical analysis and they elaborated the mortality tables. The results show that it is the male indigenous population that registers the highest infections and deaths in the propagation stage. In indigenous deaths, pneumonia, diabetes, hypertension and obesity prevailed, it was higher in women while smoking and community contagion were higher among men than in indigenous women and almost all indigenous deaths of women and most of men , their deaths occurred outside of an Intensive Care Unit (ICU). This is the first time that there is an open daily monitoring with accessible databases, but not all the characteristics of indigenous identity were released, such as the indigenous self-ascription question. As the proportion of the municipal indigenous population decreases, indigenous lethality due to the pandemic decreases, while in municipalities with a higher indigenous proportion the lethality increases.

Keywords:

Propagatión, Contagion and deaths, Indigenous, Pandemic, México