The situation was so bad late last year in El Paso that that the city for a while paid jail inmates two dollars an hour to move bodies into morgues.
Cases have been soaring in Laredo. Tony Payan, director of the center for the United States and Mexico at Rice says Mexico is being ravaged by the virus and their government is under reporting the number of covid deaths.
"There's a hidden number, which is what I think is happening in Laredo. That many people are simply not reporting that their relatives are dying of Covid." He says some are asking doctors to list the cause of death as pneumonia and not covid, so wakes and funerals can be held for more people.
He says the Mexican government has been highly irresponsible and has no strategy to deal with the pandemic. And now cartels are involved, stealing oxygen tanks because there's money to be made. "Selling them at a premium and threatening people and so on. So it goes right into their hands in the way they make money."
Payan says the response to the virus from the Mexican government to the pandemic has been irresponsible. "There is a sense that they just don't care about what is happening to Mexicans and to different cities, including all the cities that are bordering Texas. There is no strategy to deal with this."
