Mexico’s high Covid death toll blamed on populist government

New report points finger at nation's penny-pinching policies and failure to act on scientific advice

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Mexico's unwillingness to spend money, do more testing, change course or react to new scientific evidence contributed to the country being one of the worst-hit by the coronavirus pandemic, a report has concluded.

Mexico would have had a significantly lower death toll if it had reacted as satisfactorily as the average government, according to the Institute for Global Health Sciences, at the University of California, San Francisco, which also released a report sharply critical of the US response to Covid-19.