Ómicron doubles labor absenteeism in Mexico: closed banks, hotels without staff and half-worked offices

Eight days after the New Year holidays, Luis Alejandro Filio Briseño, 34, began to feel the first symptoms of covid-19 in his body. The specialist in applications and technical support for the clinical sector perceived the progress of the discomfort as his workday progressed, so the next morning he went to a pharmacy for a covid test. The result of the antigen test was positive and with this a second challenge began: processing his incapacity for work with the IMSS. Because her test was not from a reference laboratory, Institute staff told her that she had to undergo a test endorsed by the IMSS so that she could process her temporary sick leave. “At the end of the day, I was in that place for 10 hours to get tested and they gave me 10 days of disability,”recounts.

After this period, and with no obvious symptoms, Filio Briseño returned to work after giving a negative result in an antigen test. “(Work) has been complicated, yes, but those who continue to work temporarily absorb the work of others. After me, two other colleagues got sick, so the area was left unprotected, that's why I already had the urgency to be discharged,” he admits. As a specialist in providing technical support to health companies, Filio Briseño warns that his clients are also juggling due to the lack of personnel due to the pandemic.

The scale of coronavirus infections in recent weeks has caused a collateral problem: absenteeism from work. During the first three weeks of the year, the IMSS has granted more than 600,000 disabilities to workers sick with the omicron variant of the virus, which is double the number issued in January last year, according to figures released by the Directorate of Economic and Social Benefits of the IMSS. In an interview with local media, the director of the area, Mauricio Hernández Ávila, detailed this week that 52% of the disabilities have been for men and 48% for women. The age group in which there have been more infections is 20 to 29 years old and the economic sectors most affected by absenteeism caused by the pandemic have been tourism, services and health.

In Los Cabos, one of the country's tourist enclaves, this new wave of infections has paralleled the highest peak in absenteeism since the pandemic began. According to the Hotel Association of this place, 10% of its employees are sick, which means about 3,500 workers. Lilzi Orcí, executive president of the Association, acknowledges that with occupancy levels of more than 70%, active personnel have doubled shifts or have resorted to hiring temporary personnel. “This is a challenge for the hotel operation because we were faced with the need for labor, regardless of the infections, and if we add that 10% of employees with disabilities, it becomes a real challenge to be able to continue maintaining the quality of the service. ”, he refers.

The airlines have also suffered the ravages of their infected personnel. At the beginning of January, Aeroméxico reported the cancellation of dozens of flights due to the positive diagnosis of at least 140 flight attendants and 75 pilots. And although the tourism sector is one of the most affected by the fourth wave of the pandemic, it is not the only one, restaurants, entertainment centers and financial services are also affected, this week, for example, 62 branches of the HSBC bank —13 of them in Mexico City—they closed in the country for the same reason.

The president of the Mexican Employers' Confederation (Coparmex), José Medina Mora, estimates that between 10 and 15% of current absenteeism has been caused by covid-19, with the exception that these absences, unlike other waves , they are recorded for a few days. “Given the reality of the risks of contagion, it is important that companies allow remote work, that they adapt to changing working hours towards the results of each of the collaborators, that the tests are applied at the cost of the company and that they can process incapacities remotely to avoid further contagion," he says.

Despite the recommendations made by the employers, some companies maintain their face-to-face scheme at one of the most critical points of the health crisis. Ricardo Lara, a telephone advisor in a

in Mexico City, received confirmation of his contagion last Monday and is one of the more than 600,000 workers who have processed his disability. "In other campaigns they have allowed the

but in the campaign that I am in they have never opted for that option for the security of the data that we handle for that of the workers who are there," he says.

The 24-year-old employee attributes the mildness of his symptoms, just a little cough and dry throat, to the two doses that had been applied. However, the biological did not free him from the bureaucratic journey of having to go two consecutive days and from dawn, to his IMSS clinic, in the municipality of Nezahualcóyotl (State of Mexico) to be able to get a test and thereby obtain his disability. . “I was worried about whether the covid test was going to be respected at work because they are also not accepting tests from private laboratories or the covid permit at work because many other employees do not have symptoms and are taking the covid permit to be able to be absent” , confess.

Both health and labor specialists observe the rise in contagion figures day by day, while the lines of workers waiting hours to get a test or a disability also continue to rise.

With record levels of daily cases, Mexico already has more than 4.5 million patients and more than 302,000 deaths from the virus.

subscribe here

to the

of EL PAÍS México and receive all the informative keys of the current affairs of this country