Mérida, Yucatán (June 17, 2021).- Public health professor David Canché Durán, who practices medicine privately, asked the state Health Secretariat to immediately decree the red epidemiological traffic light in Yucatán, “because the Covid is horrible” at the moment.
“Only last Tuesday 15, I already treated 17 patients with symptoms and confirmed that they have Covid,” he warned. “I have data that colleagues from the official health system gave me and the Covid hospitals in Mérida are 100% occupied, patients are waiting for a bed, and in private clinics, there is no place for serious patients, they are very reliable data from the hospital saturation ”.
On his Facebook account, Dr. Canché published some data on Covid public hospitals from Monday, June 14th. He says that in the UMAE of the IMSS 31 patients were waiting for a bed to be treated for Covid-19; In exT-1 of the IMSS there were 90 patients in internal medicine and 15 in the emergency room waiting for a bed; in the HRAE there were 32 critically ill patients; in the Juárez of the IMSS another 60 patients on the three floors, and at the ICU (intensive care unit) 6 patients and 12 awaiting a place in hospitalization.
With data from yesterday, Dr. Canché Durán reported that in the Issste there are 6 ICU patients and 8 in the emergency room, which represents 100% of the occupied beds, and in the hospitalization tower there are 37 patients out of a total of 50 beds available for Covid; At the O’Horán Hospital, there are 32 patients in the Covid area with 28 beds available. In general, he says, public hospitals that treat Covid-19 are at 113%.
“In recent weeks I have treated 20 people on average daily with symptoms of Covid, many of them have already confirmed the virus in their tests,” said the interviewee. “The Covid situation is horrible right now.”
Variant of Covid-19
He suspects that this intense outbreak of Covid in Yucatan is caused by the new SARS-Cov2 variety called “Delta” (British variety) because the risk of contagion is very high, it is infecting entire families when there is a coronavirus carrier, it does not respect the vaccines against Covid-19 and is a virus that spreads in the United Kingdom and Canada.
“What draws our attention to a group of intensivist and pediatric doctors is that the virus has as its main target young people and children because before the Covid did not affect them so much,” he stressed. “I listen to the stories of my infected patients and I realize that the young man carries the virus and infects everyone, be they parents, vaccinated grandparents. Several colleagues and I have been saying it for more than a month that there is a new variety of the virus in Yucatán. It is not possible for 5 people of a family to be infected in the same house. What is happening outside the hospitals is much more serious because it is not a real reflection of the Covid situation ”.
In many cases, he said, health authorities do not report those infected with Covid who are in their homes with oxygen to survive and the thousands of people who are tested in private laboratories and are positive are not taken into account. They are not taken into account simply because they do not enter public hospitals, so it calculates that those infected and hospitalized are 5 or 6 times higher than the official figures published by the state Ministry of Health. “I am struck by the fact that the Ministry of Health does not say what was the result of the tests it ordered Indre to carry out, if it only takes 48 hours at most to know it, two weeks have passed and the result is not known,” he said.
“They are taking time to decree the red traffic light, the pandemic is going to get out of control if they do not do so at this time of rebound in cases. I witnessed the lines of ambulances that took patients with covid to the IMSS Hospital Juárez, even colleagues who work at the IMSS informed me that there are already two deceased pregnant women, but they do not report it. “
The public health teacher considered that the change of traffic light from orange to yellow (last April 22) was due to the political campaigns and the elections of June 6, but now the results are being seen with an almost uncontrollable regrowth and the return of some restrictive measures that worked in previous months.
“What the government has to do is open the ‘Siglo XXI’ and isolate infected people because they are taking the virus home and infecting their families,” he recommended. “In a house there is no healthy distance nor can control be maintained because they only consist of one room that is a dining room, they have one or two rooms, but 5 to 6 people live, for this reason there are many infections,” he said. “We must return to confinement to stop human mobility, locking ourselves up is the only way that will reduce infections and once again have a low incidence in the pandemic in Yucatán. Of course, it is obvious that they do not want to stop the economy because decreeing the red traffic light means the closure of businesses and non-essential businesses, they prefer that people defend themselves with their own means. People are not guilty of this regrowth, Yucatán was opened and since we Yucatecans are used to obeying the government due to the political system of paternalism, we pay attention to it.
For this reason, the majority thought that when we went to the yellow traffic light, the pandemic was already under control and they were confident. It was a deadly game for politics, now the government has to enact measures to bring back control because now those who are at risk are young people and children who do not have a vaccine and are the target of the new strain ‘Delta’.
As he affirmed, he knows many cases of patients who have been detected with the Covid-19 virus who are convalescing at home and who have to spend $ 1,400 for the rental of an oxygen tank that lasts 18 hours. If you have to use this aid for 10 or 14 days to overcome the shortness of breath due to Covid, the person would be spending a lot of money for them to save their lives. This investment does not include medical consultation or the purchase of drugs to counteract the coronavirus virus.
“In the municipalities of the interior of the state they no longer install Covid areas, they no longer put respiratory areas, infected people are coming in and out of those places on their own,” he reiterated.
He was asked if the vaccination carried out in Yucatán, which has already benefited more than 900,000 people, according to the health authority, could not reduce the cases of Covid.
“Vaccination in Mexico is very slow, it reaches only 18% of the population, we are not even close to herd immunity because it requires at least 70% of the population to have the vaccine,” he explained.
“In the United States they carry 60% of the vaccinated population and for this reason, a better control is seen than in our country.”
According to the digital newspaper Informador.mx, on April 8, the Secretary of Health of Yucatán, Dr. Mauricio Sauri Vivas, confirmed that he is monitoring a case of variant B.1.1.7 known as “British” in the State. Covid-19, which is a more contagious strain than the first of the coronavirus.
