Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

A district court in Mexico City has ordered the Mexican government to take more aggressive action within 24 hours to fight the new coronavirus as a civil society organization warns that the country is not taking enough precautions.

"The authorities are not adopting effective general sanitary measures in proportion to the risks the country faces to detect COVID-19 and prevent contagion," the court said in its ruling.

Felipe Neri Narváez, a lawyer with the civil society group Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity, said he filed the complaint that prompted the order because of "omissions" by the government that "could put inhabitants at risk."

Mexico has kept its borders open as other countries in the Americas slam theirs shut to prevent travelers from bringing in the new coronavirus. Health revisions are minimal or nonexistent at the country's international airports, while the president himself continues to hold public events that draw large crowds.

The country recorded its first death from the virus Wednesday—a middle-aged diabetic—and confirmed 118 cases of COVID-19.

Specifically, Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity asked the president to stop holding public events—especially in isolated parts of the country where health services are scarce—so as to avoid contagion.

Last weekend, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador drew large crowds in southern Mexico, where he was photographed kissing young children and hugging indigenous women. The president plans to again attend an event this coming weekend in yet another indigenous community.

The Mexican president has asked U.S. President Donald Trump to keep the United States' southern border open after the U.S. and Canada agreed Wednesday to close their shared border to nonessential traffic. Mexico is the U.S.' top trade partner. It also supplies roughly one in three fresh fruits and vegetables consumed in the U.S.

López Obrador insisted Thursday that he is acting responsibly by encouraging, but not forcing, Mexicans to stay indoors.

"I'm not going to say, I have decreed, as they have elsewhere, that liberties be limited, curfews, that nobody goes on the streets, that the army takes over the country," López Obrador said at his daily press conference.

The president dedicated that conference to updates on construction of a controversial new airport for the capital but was instead peppered with questions from reporters about his lack of restrictions and edicts to contain COVID-19.

Mexican legislators have also been busy advancing agendas unrelated to virus response. On Wednesday, the lower house approved a bill allowing for the reelection of legislators who have long been limited to a single term in office.

And on Thursday, Ricardo Monreal Ávila, coordinator of the ruling Morena party in the Senate, presented an amendment to the copyright law that would bring Mexican legislation more in line with copyright protections promised under trade agreements such as the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada accord.