"I imagined it was going to be worse than they were assuming," said Macias, who led the country's fight against the swine flu pandemic in 2009.

MEXICO CITY: Mexico on Thursday became the world's third country to surpass 200,000 coronavirus deaths, as fears grew of another wave of infections after Easter.

The nation's Covid-19 fatality toll now stands at 200,211, the health ministry said in its daily update.

The bleak milestone comes despite a decline in new cases and deaths in recent weeks, following a surge in January that pushed many hospitals to the breaking point. The country's coronavirus czar, Hugo Lopez-Gatell, has warned of the risk of a new wave of infections as millions of Mexicans prepare for the Easter holidays around the start of April.

That prospect also worries epidemiologist Alejandro Macias, although he thinks that it is possible that Mexico has now gained some degree of immunity.

"The world is in a third wave. Perhaps few countries had it as intensely as Mexico in the second, so the virus would have fewer people to infect," he told AFP.

Mexico's death toll is far worse than the government's "catastrophic" scenario of 60,000 deaths.

"I imagined it was going to be worse than they were assuming," said Macias, who led the country's fight against the swine flu pandemic in 2009.

"But it was much more lethal," he said.

Excess mortality data suggests the real Covid-19 death toll is much higher than the official figure, due to limited testing.