Mexico City remains at a red light despite the drop in hospitalizations

Thousands of users at the Pantitlán station in Mexico City on January 11, 2021. Hector Guerrero

The pandemic has given a slight respite to the metropolitan area of ​​the Valley of Mexico.

The capital authorities have announced that there has been a decrease in new hospitalizations for covid-19 during the last two weeks.

"For three consecutive weeks, practically all of January, each week we had around 6,000 to 6,200 new hospitalized in the Valley of Mexico and in this last week we have dropped to 4,940, a reduction of 18% compared to the previous week," he indicated At a press conference this Friday the director of the Digital Agency of Mexico City, Eduardo Clark.

Despite the fact that the indicators for Mexico City and the metropolitan area are down compared to January, the Government of Claudia Sheinbaum has decided to keep the epidemiological traffic light in red, that is, on maximum alert.

The official added that the percentage of occupancy in public hospitals in Mexico City has dropped from 89% to 77% in the last 15 days.

Until this Thursday, the health authorities reported the hospitalization of 6,638 coronavirus patients, 4,848 people in general beds and 1,790 in beds with a ventilator.

To date, the metropolitan area of ​​the Valley of Mexico has 9,045 hospitalized for the virus, of these 6,777 patients are in general beds and the rest in a bed with a ventilator.

The official has referred that these figures represent a reduction compared to the peak of more than 10,000 hospitalizations registered 15 days ago.

Clark has detailed that the level of positive cases detected in an average of 22,000 daily tests carried out by the local government decreased from 25% during the first days of January to 18% this week.

It's the most encouraging data we've had in a long time, ”Clark said.

To date, 155,000 vaccinations have been administered among the city's medical staff.

After eight weeks without operating, the local government has authorized the partial reopening of shopping centers and department stores starting this Sunday.

These points of sale may open with a capacity of 20% from Tuesday to Sunday.

Workers and visitors must wear a mask at all times and the maximum stay allowed per client will be 30 minutes.

Shopping centers that operated 24 hours before the pandemic will be able to do so again.

The restaurants will continue to operate partially on terraces and open spaces, but from the following week they will have three more hours of activity, since they will be able to close at 9:00 p.m.

Among the new activities, the operation of the open-air tourist transport, Turibus, with the use of face masks, will also resume.

"We consider that it is not yet time to open the restaurants inside because masks are not used and it is proven that they are places of high contagion, we understand the difficult situation that we are going through, but we still have more than 6,000 hospitalized in Mexico City", has Sheinbaum insisted.

Despite the reduction in new hospitalizations and a lower percentage of positivity in covid tests, the number of deaths from coronavirus in Mexico City is close to 30,000 deaths, which represents 18% of the total deaths reported because of the disease in the country.

Until Thursday, Mexico had accumulated 162,992 deaths and almost 1.9 million confirmed cases since the pandemic began to date.