Mexico has lost or discarded 5 percent of COVID-19 tests

Mexico has lost or discarded 93,803 results from COVID-19 tests throughout the pandemic, health officials announced this week. 

Mexico’s Health Ministry epidemiology director José Luis Alomía announced the missing tests at a press conference Tuesday. 

The missing results make up about 5 percent of total tests for the country, which is already struggling with low testing capacity.

As of Tuesday, health officials have notified more than 1.9 million people of their results, Alomia said.

Health officials in Mexico have forgone mass testing initiatives and instead focused available tests on symptomatic patients. Mexico’s reduced testing has led the country to a 41 percent positivity rate, the second highest in the world, according to Our World in Data. 

As of Thursday, Mexico has reported 743,216 cases and more than 77,600 deaths, according to a count by Johns Hopkins University. They have the ninth-highest number of cases reported, behind three other Latin American countries: Brazil, Peru and Argentina. 

The U.S. has the highest number of cases in the world at 7.2 million, followed by India at 6.3 million.