“Water, honey and caresses”: López Obrador resumes his agenda after having overcome covid-19

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, this Monday, after having overcome covid-19. MEXICO'S PRESIDENCY (via REUTERS)

Andrés Manuel López Obrador has returned to his morning conferences after having overcome covid-19. The president has reappeared this Monday in the same pulpit where he announced just a week ago, without a mask and in a closed space, what he believed was the flu. The president has assured that he has only had mild symptoms of the disease, which he has treated with "a lot of water, paracetamol, honey and caresses": "We are out of contagion, it went well for us, it is demonstrable that this variant does not have the same severity of the previous one —the delta— in symptoms and recovery time, this is good so that we don't get scared”. Mexico is immersed in a fourth wave of coronavirus, with a record of daily infections that is putting the hospital system in check.

After six days of isolation, the Mexican president has resumed his political agenda. López Obrador, 68, has overcome the coronavirus for the second time. On this occasion, he has only had mild symptoms such as "hoarseness and burning in the throat." "My treatment consisted of taking care of myself, isolating myself, drinking a lot of water - that's what doctors recommend - paracetamol for two days only, when I had a little discomfort, I didn't want to take it any longer but that was enough, honey for the throat, although Lemon is expensive, I tried not to put so much on it, and remedies that we all already know”, he described.

The president refused to take the antiviral drugs against the SARS-CoV-2 virus recently approved in the country. "These antivirals, even though they are already authorized and have been recommended, should be applied more to those with chronic diseases and basically to older people," he said. Continuing with his list of home care, López Obrador has once again named the Vaporub and caresses against the disease: “They make fun of the Vaporub, but it helps, especially because we all like to be caressed, to give us a little carving in the chest, on the back, on the soles of the feet, to children, to adults, to everyone, as long as the person doing the caressing is already free of covid.”

The president has taken advantage of his return to minimize the impact of omicron on health, of which he has only recognized that it is very contagious. “Infections are growing a lot in the country, but hospitalizations are not. The most important thing: there is no increase in deaths,” he said. Since the ferocious entry of the new variant in Mexico, the numbers of daily cases have skyrocketed. The peak was recorded on Saturday with more than 47,000 affected in a single day. These numbers have exceeded the capacity of the Mexican government to measure the spread of the virus, which, given the avalanche of infections and the shortage of detection tests, has chosen to discourage the use of tests on a massive scale.

The escalation of cases has ended up reaching hospitals: in the last month hospital care has doubled, and more than a hundred medical centers are at 100% capacity. Although the occupation increases, the panorama is very different from what was experienced just a year ago in the country, when many patients stayed at the doors of hospitals without beds or oxygen.

The president also highlighted this Monday the importance of vaccination: “What we have to do is get vaccinated.

Those who have thought about it a lot, I would recommend that they get vaccinated, it does not affect them, it does not have secondary damage and it does protect, thanks to the vaccine we are getting ahead. There are fewer symptoms and we do not get worse”.

In Mexico, 57.7% of the total population has the complete vaccination schedule, a percentage that climbs to 80% for those over 18 years of age.

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