The alarms about a new wave of covid arriving from China are also worrying in Mexico, although the health authorities affirm that, for the moment, there are no reasons to worry about a situation that has scientists from half the world on their guard.
The North American country is going through the sixth wave of infections, with more than 38,000 active cases, according to the report issued on Wednesday by the Ministry of Health, and local epidemiologists and researchers consider it necessary to reinforce vaccination among the most vulnerable population, recommend the use face masks and require negative PCR tests for those who enter Mexico from the Asian giant, a controversial decision for the authorities, but which scientists consider a common public health measure, because it reduces uncertainties.
“The situation in China should be worrying, and in fact it is worrying the whole world, because it represents an enormous risk,” says Andreu Comas, a professor in the Department of Microbiology at the Faculty of Medicine of the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí.
“The main risk of this outbreak in China is the generation of new variants.
Before this outbreak, we believed that the main place for the proliferation of new variants could be Africa, but the consequences of de-escalating very quickly after very rigid control policies have generated this situation in China”, explains Comas.
Since the Chinese authorities relaxed their policy of zero spread of the disease, the country has suffered a tsunami of infections that threatens to jeopardize its health system.
In a nation where information about the covid is handled with secrecy —and that secrecy is strictly enforced— it is not clear what the exact number of infections is, although officials from Zhejiang province, where 65 million live, over the weekend of people, announced that the daily cases exceeded one million.
"More than 75% of patients are in serious condition, it is an unprecedented challenge," Zhu Huadong, director of the Emergency Department at Peking Union Medical College Hospital, told international media.
The Chinese government has officially reported only 12 deaths.
“It is time to have an intelligent strategy in Mexico”, says the researcher Comas.
And intelligently, he mentions measures that have been controversial for the Mexican government, such as requiring negative PCR tests for those entering from China, as well as imposing isolation on these people for at least five days.
Mexico, says Comas, has been considered a "covid paradise", that is, a country that has had very lax measures for travelers, which allowed many people to take refuge in their cities in the middle of the pandemic, fleeing the harsh quarantines imposed in United States or Europe.
Although the Government of Mexico decreed a health emergency in March 2020, at the same time it sank into a sea of contradictions.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador appealed to citizen responsibility to avoid contagion,
He urged companies to take their own measures, but there was no strict quarantine policy, of total closure of businesses, for fear of a negative impact on the economy.
There were, however, puzzling measures, such as banning the brewing of beer.
The experts affirm that the authorities must go one step further than appealing to collective solidarity.
In addition to requiring PCR tests for people traveling from China, a campaign should be established for the use of face masks in closed spaces or in those places where there are more possibilities of contagion, such as public transport, shopping centers, concerts or public events.
They also recommend reinforcing vaccination among the vulnerable population and children under five years of age and increasing surveillance to detect new variants.
The health authorities have so far been relaxed in the face of the outbreak in China and the pandemic situation in Mexico.
The Undersecretary of Health, Hugo López-Gatell, admitted days ago that Mexico registers "eight weeks of increase in the number of infections" and said that "although this trend is slower than what other periods have presented throughout this pandemic It is important to be aware of its growth”.
López-Gatell reported that "fortunately this situation has remained very consistent where cases are increasing, but hospitalizations are increasing at a much lower rate."
Official statistics show that infections are mainly concentrated in Mexico City, the huge city of more than 20 million people, followed by Quintana Roo, Baja California, Sonora, Yucatán and Aguascalientes.
Scientists, however, ask not to relax prevention measures.
“All precautions must be taken,” says infectologist Samuel Ponce de León, who has collaborated with the World Health Organization in the fight against influenza and has coordinated the UNAM Response Commission to the covid-19 epidemic.
Ponce de León explains that Mexico has an important advantage over China: here people have been more exposed to the virus and its variants, in addition to the fact that the vaccination campaign was successful, because it is estimated that at least 80% of the elderly population of age has been vaccinated.
"The population of China is almost virgin in the face of covid," says the scientist, who fears that the rapid increase in infections could generate new variants that "could be more complicated."
“We are in the middle of the sixth wave of infections, more or less intense, with increasing demand for medical care, but we do not expect a situation like the one we are already experiencing to occur.
There is no reason for the population to be alarmed ”, says the infectologist.
However, he also recommends that the authorities make "a strict call" to take precautionary measures such as constant hand washing, the use of a face mask, the implementation of healthy distance and vaccination.
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