Hugo López-Gatell Ramírez

On June 28, 2021, López-Gatell accused the protesting parents of children with cancer, blockading Mexico City International Airport to highlight ongoing shortages of cancer medications, of being part of an international right-wing campaign to foment a coup against the López Obrador administration. The backlash against López-Gatell saw him accuse economic, business and political interest groups of distorting his comments. He responded saying that felt empathy with the aggrieved parents and would work tirelessly to get obtain the required medicines.

While many Mexicans reacted with sympathy to López-Gatell's announcement in February 2021 that he had tested positive for COVID-19, Samuel García Sepúlveda [es], a gubernatorial candidate in Nuevo Leon, called for him to resign, and former president Vicente Fox criticized him on social media.

On March 10, 2021, after still testing positive and admitting he was contagious, López-Gatell was photographed with his girlfriend Rebeca Peralta in a park in Colonia Condesa, Mexico City, without a face mask. The photos quickly went viral on social media. When asked about his actions, López-Gatell complained of greedy corporate media who have a political and economic agenda.

On February 20, 2021, López-Gatell announced he had tested positive for the COVID-19 virus. Originally López-Gatell′s symptoms were described as ″mild″, but on February 24 it was reported that he had a fever and needed supplemental oxygen. He was hospitalized at the Hospital Temporal Citi-Banamex.

As a researcher, he has written and participated in 40 papers, and in 2020 he had been cited an estimated of 6,457 times. In addition to clinical and academic roles, López-Gatell serves as an associate editor for scientific journals as Global Health Action of the Umeå Center for Global Health Research, The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, AIDS (official body of the International AIDS Society) and the academic journal of the Salvador Zubirán National Institute of Health Sciences and Nutrition (INCMNSZ).

The World Health Organization invited López-Gatell to join its team of experts in public health on May 24, 2020.

Hugo López-Gatell is a Mexican epidemiologist, author, and infectious diseases expert who has served as head of the Undersecretariat of Prevention and Health Promotion at the Mexican Secretariat of Health since 2018. Since January 2020, he has also played a major role as a spokesman and one of the lead members of the task force addressing the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico.

On December 1, 2018, López-Gatell was appointed by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador head of the Undersecretariat of Prevention and Health Promotion in the Secretariat of Health. From the beginning of 2020 and after the rising of the COVID-19 pandemic López-Gatell has also applied his research and public service expertise as one of the main strategist and main spokesperson of Mexican Government on the 2020 coronavirus pandemic in Mexico. From March 6, 2020, López-Gatell is conducting a daily press conference where he and the Secretariat of Health directives are giving information also explanations about the official strategies and decisions.

In 1998 he was appointed as Chief of Resident Doctors at INCMNSZ serving and as Medical Specialist A from 1999 to 2001. From 2013 to 2018 he was Director of Innovation on Infectious Disease Surveillance and Control at Mexican Secretariat of Health. In 2008 he was appointed as deputy general director of Epidemiology at the same secretariat. In that role, he led the creation of the National Epidemiological Surveillance System (Sinave), a re-engineering of the Mexican public health system to improve reporting and detection of epidemiological surveillance.

López-Gatell attended the School of Medicine of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) graduating in 1994 as Physician-Surgeon. Afterwards, he obtained a master's degree in Medical Sciences at UNAM in 2000, and later a Ph.D degree in epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health at the Johns Hopkins University in 2006.

Hugo López-Gatell Ramírez was born on February 22, 1969 in Mexico City. His father, Francisco López-Gatell Trujillo, was a chemist, surgeon and urologist. His mother, Margarita Ramírez Duarte, was a nurse at the Hospital 20 de Noviembre. His paternal grandfather, Francisco López Gatell Comas, was a Spanish military engineer of Jewish descent born in Catalonia in 1897. He opposed the Franco regime and took refuge in France; later he fought against the Nazis in World War II. During the war he ended up in a concentration camp, eventually escaping to Mexico with his wife and three children.