Gobierno de Mexico

Hugo Lopez-Gatell, the head of Mexico's COVID-19 response, talks about vaccination rates during a press conference on Friday, Jan. 28, 2022.

Reported COVID-19 deaths shot up this week in Mexico.

Mexico’s health ministry has reported more than 450 fatalities from COVID-19 for three consecutive days this week, with 475 cases reported on Tuesday, 532 on Wednesday and 495 on Thursday — the highest daily tolls since early October.

Those deaths come as the country has experienced high levels of COVID-19 spread for weeks, regularly reporting single-day records for new infections.

However, Hugo Lopez-Gatell, who leads the country’s COVID-19 response, said Friday that the rate of spread is slowing.

While the number of new cases has not yet started to go down, he said, infections are now ticking up much less quickly than in recent weeks.

He also emphasized that vaccinations remain the most important tool Mexico has to combat the virus.

Mexico has now reported 304,803 COVID-19 deaths.