MEXICO CITY, May 5 (Xinhua) -- Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Tuesday that he hoped to gradually reopen productive and social activities on May 17 in light of the evidence of a slowdown in the spread of COVID-19 in the country.

The president said that activities could be generally resumed at the end of the month, provided that the health situation in the country does not worsen.

"If we are allowed by doctors, specialists, scientists, we want to start reopening activities, little by little, and not throughout the country, but by region and taking care of all sanitary measures," said Lopez Obrador at a press conference.

The undersecretary of prevention and health promotion, Hugo Lopez-Gatell, stated that Mexico is below the United States, Spain, Germany, France and Switzerland in terms of the evolution of the disease, adding that contagion in Mexico has been reduced between 60 and 75 percent thanks to social distancing and other measures.

"Mexico had an initial doubling (of cases) every two days. Only in the first four or five days did we reach the first 100 cases and later we had a very drastic inclination of the curve," said the official, who is the head of the government's strategy for facing the pandemic.

"We started to have cases doubling every five days and when we reached day 40, we had a change, also again, and we are seeing cases double every six days; that is, the epidemic is slowing down," he said.

As of Monday night, Mexico reported a total of 24,905 cases, with 2,271 deaths.