A man receives a reinforcement of the covid vaccine, in Mexico City. José Méndez (EFE)
Mexico has once again reached a new record for coronavirus infections.
Health authorities have reported 49,343 confirmed cases, in the midst of the fourth wave caused by omicron.
In a month in which the focus has been on the largest increase in sick people in the entire pandemic, this Tuesday's data also shows a considerable rise in deaths.
The Latin American country has registered 320 deaths in the last 24 hours, the highest number since the end of November.
After two weeks complicated by the cold and the soaring rise in infections, all eyes are on hospitalizations and the burden that omicron can represent for the health system. The Undersecretary of Health, Hugo López-Gatell, has stressed in the morning conference of the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, that in Mexico infections are growing at a speed 10 times greater than hospitalizations and has insisted that there is still room for maneuver considerable to manage hospital admissions. “It has been shown that fortunately, although it is a variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that spreads very quickly and produces a large number of sick people, in general, the vast majority have mild symptoms, similar to other respiratory diseases. ”, the official pointed out.
The latest statistical cut shows that the country registers 34% occupancy of general beds, a jump of three percentage points compared to a day before. Beds with ventilators are already occupied at 19%, 2% more than on Monday, while in recent weeks around a hundred hospitals have registered considerable saturation percentages. Vaccination has been decisive in avoiding serious cases and deaths compared to the impact of the waves in the summer and at the beginning of last year. All in all, Mexico already exceeds 5,000 people hospitalized for covid.
The challenge ómicron poses to the health system is a question of volume. It is a version of the virus that has mild manifestations in vaccinated people, but it is so contagious that many people have needed to go to medical institutions to treat the symptoms. “Although there is beginning to be an impact on the hospital system, the number of very seriously ill patients or deaths has not increased significantly,” says Samuel Ponce de León, coordinator of the UNAM Response Commission to the covid-19 epidemic. , although he warns that hospitalizations will surely increase in the coming days. "Given the time of evolution of the disease, we would expect that it will probably be this week or the next when there will be the greatest impact on hospital occupation," he says.
Mexico City remains the engine of the epidemic in the country, with about one in four active cases throughout the country. Health authorities estimate that 300,000 people are sick, a figure that had not been reached in the three previous waves. The ómicron expansion map has as main affected the touristic state of Baja California Sur, the metropolitan area of Mexico City and San Luis Potosí, in the center of the country when the incidence rate per 100,000 inhabitants is measured. In addition to the border region with the United States, considerable progress has been made in states on the Pacific coast such as Colima, Nayarit and Sinaloa, as well as in the Yucatan peninsula.
The rebound of the pandemic has once again caused some states in the country to have had friction with the federal government over the return to face-to-face classes. A dozen entities have postponed young people returning to schools, despite the fact that educational authorities insist that schools are not risk areas nor have they contributed to the uptick in cases. López-Gatell has indicated that nearly 1.4 million teachers have already been vaccinated with a booster dose, more than half of the target population.
Throughout the country, there are long lines of people who have lagged behind in vaccination or who are looking for a booster, as well as for taking covid tests that allow them to confirm their contagion and justify sick leave, despite government attempts to discourage the application. of tests.
Authorities expect to give about 18 million booster doses in the coming weeks to people aged 40 and over, as long as five months have passed since their last vaccination.
"In Mexico, as in other parts of the world, 65 out of every 100 people who are hospitalized for covid-19 were without a vaccine or with an incomplete schedule," said López-Gatell, "it is very important to get vaccinated."
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