Mexico’s president, who has previously had two cases of COVID-19, acknowledged testing positive for the coronavirus on Sunday and said that he would be postponing a trip to the Yucatan peninsula.
In his social media posts, the president Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that “it isn’t serious.”
The remark came after local media reported that López Obrador felt dizzy on Sunday morning and had to postpone his visit, which his presidential spokeswoman rejected.
López Obrador, 69, said that he would withdraw for “a few days” in Mexico City despite acknowledging a history of heart issues.
“I shall be in Mexico City and celebrating, even if from a distance, the 16th birthday of (his son) Jess Ernesto,” he tweeted. “My heart is 100 percent and as I have had to halt the tour.
Early in 2021, López Obrador was sick with COVID-19, but he recovered after receiving what he at the time referred to as an experimental medication. He revealed in January 2022, during a rise in coronavirus infections in Mexico, that he had contracted COVID-19 a second time.
Even during the height of the epidemic, López Obrador refused to wear a mask unless it was absolutely essential, such as on an airplane. He also rejected to establish obligatory mask laws. The presidential plane of Mexico, which he just revealed had been sold to Tajikistan, was the object of his infamous refusal to use.
When asked whether the president will take a commercial airplane back to Mexico City, the president’s spokeswoman Jess Ramrez did not immediately comment.
Adán Augusto López, the interior secretary, will stand in for the president at the daily morning press briefings, according to the president, who is still in seclusion.
That might give the interior secretary’s waning effort to secure the Morena party’s presidential candidacy for the 2024 elections a boost. In the majority of surveys on the primary contest, López, who is not the president’s relative, is now in second place behind Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum.
