Mexican President Manuel Lopez Obrador on Sunday suspended a tour of the Yucatan Peninsula after acknowledging he tested positive for COVID-19 for a third time.
Lopez Obrador wrote in his social media accounts that “it isn’t serious.”
The comment followed reports in the local press that Lopez Obrador, 69, felt faint on Sunday morning and had to cancel his tour, something his presidential spokesman denied.
Photo: Reuters
The president, who has acknowledged a history of heart problems, wrote that he would isolate for “a few days” in Mexico City.
“My heart is 100 percent and as I have had to suspend the tour, I will be in Mexico City and celebrating, although from afar, the 16th birthday of [his son] Jesus Ernesto,” he wrote.
Lopez Obrador was ill with COVID-19 in early 2021 and recovered after receiving what he described at the time as an experimental treatment. In January last year, he announced he had come down with COVID-19 a second time, amid a spike in infections in Mexico.
Lopez Obrador declined to enact mandatory mask mandates and refused to wear a mask even at the peak of the pandemic unless it was absolutely necessary, as on airline flights. He famously refused to use Mexico’s presidential jet, which he recently announced had been sold to Tajikistan.
Presidential spokesman Jesus Ramirez did not immediately respond to a question about whether the president would return to Mexico City aboard a commercial airline flight.
The president said that while he remains in isolation, Mexican Secretary of the Interior Adan Augusto Lopez would fill in at the daily presidential morning news briefings.
That could provide a boost for the interior secretary’s flagging campaign to win the presidential nomination of Lopez Obrador’s Morena party for next year’s elections. Lopez currently trails Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum in most polls on the primary race.
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