In 2023, Hugo López-Gatell Ramirez - contrary to numerous peer-reviewed articles - stated that the swine flu pandemic did not have its origins 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.

[9] López-Gatell is strongly criticized for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico, along with several state health ministers like Enrique Perez Rico, the preparation, response and management were consistently the worst in the world according to multiple published papers.

[13] 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 León, called for him to resign,[14] and former president Vicente Fox criticized him on social media.

[15] 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.

His paternal grandfather, Francisco López Gatell Comas, was a Spanish military engineer of Jewish descent born in Catalonia in 1897.

[17] As a young man, Hugo was part of a progressive rock band called Cantera; his companions would later be founding members of La Gusana Ciega and Santa Sabina.