A top Mexican government official who went to the hospital to receive treatment after testing positive for the coronavirus allegedly spit and coughed on hospital staff because he did not get preferential treatment.

“Dr. Daniel López Regalado visited Presidente C. Juárez General Hospital in Oaxaca de Juárez, Oaxaca, on Thursday and received ambulatory care after complaining that he was ill, according to a complaint report filed by the hospital,” The Daily Mail reported. “Regalado, who oversaw the state health board, returned later in the afternoon and told doctors that he was experiencing a cough, fever, diarrhea, and was having difficulty breathing.”

Regalado subsequently tested positive for the coronavirus, was hospitalized, and later on that night allegedly started to treat hospital staff poorly, saying that he was not getting preferential treatment.

On Friday, staff at the hospital said that he became more aggressive toward them and that he was denied his request to leave the hospital.

On Saturday morning, the staff finally granted him his release from isolation after he allegedly “coughed and spat at them.”

“Dr. López Regalado was detained Monday and was placed under medical and psychological observation,” The Daily Mail noted, adding that he had reportedly been fired. “He has been charged with risk of infection.”

Yahoo News reported that Regalado was the “head of Jurisdiction of the Ministry of Health who led a brigade of the Epidemiological Emergencies Unit where he was in contact with infected people,” according to a Google translation of the article.

A Johns Hopkins coronavirus tracker stated late on Tuesday that Mexico has at least 2,785 reported cases of coronavirus with at least 141 deaths.

The coronavirus, which originated in China, has infected a confirmed 1,430,141 people worldwide and killed at least 82,119 people.

The real numbers are likely far higher as there has been widespread reporting indicating that China lied about the extent of the outbreak in their country and that the real numbers are likely many, many times higher than what the Chinese Communist Party reported. Another country that is widely thought to have lied about the extent of the outbreak in their country is Iran.

The Washington Post reported:

The coronavirus pandemic ravaging the globe officially claimed 2,563 lives in Wuhan, where it began in a market that sold exotic animals for consumption. But evidence emerging from the city as it stirs from its two-month hibernation suggests the real death toll is exponentially higher. … Using photos posted online, social media sleuths have estimated that Wuhan funeral homes had returned 3,500 urns a day since March 23. That would imply a death toll in Wuhan of about 42,000 — or 16 times the official number. Another widely shared calculation, based on Wuhan’s 84 furnaces running nonstop and each cremation taking an hour, put the death toll at 46,800.

Bloomberg News reported last week that U.S. intelligence officials have told President Donald Trump that the real number of cases and deaths in China is far higher than what the communist nation reported.

“China’s public reporting on cases and deaths is intentionally incomplete,” Bloomberg News reported, according to three U.S. officials that it spoke to. “Two of the officials said the report concludes that China’s numbers are fake.”

This report has been updated to include additional information.