Mérida, Yucatán, (June 09, 2021).- Given the sustained increase for 3 weeks in the indicators to measure the Coronavirus pandemic in Yucatán, the head of the Ministry of Health of the state of Yucatán (SSY), Mauricio Sauri Vivas, announced the implementation of 3 temporary measures recommended by the Committee of Experts in Public Health, which will come into force as of this Thursday, June 10, and which will focus on preventing infections, mainly taking care of the behavior of young people in the social sphere.
The measures that will be applied are the following:
- The restriction on vehicular mobility is implemented from 11:30 at night to 5 in the morning for all days of the week.
- The licenses of bars and nightclubs that are operating as restaurants will be suspended.
- The capacity of restaurants, religious centers, and gyms will go down from 75% to 50%.
In a message addressed to the Yucatecan population through social networks, Sauri Vivas recalled that on April 22, the indicators showed that it was our turn to change to a yellow traffic light, since we were at the minimum levels of the pandemic, with 60 average cases per day, 18 average daily admissions and 163 occupied beds.
“However, in just one week we went from 117 to 154 daily cases detected on average, which represents an increase of 32%. In hospital admissions we went from 23 to 33 on average per day, which implies a growth of 43%; and hospital occupancy increased 59%, going from 167 beds to 266, “said the state official.
The head of the SSY indicated that this increase is mainly due to the relaxation of the measures by young people and as an example cited that only in the last week young people between 16 and 39 years old contributed to 70.2% of infections.
The problem is that, when contracting the virus, they infect their relatives, so inevitably, some are hospitalized and there are unfortunate deaths, the state official said.
In this sense, Sauri Vivas pointed out that the growth in the number of infections is atypical and the possibility of the presence of a new strain of the virus is being considered, so samples of the last infections have been sent to the Institute for Epidemiological Diagnosis and Reference (INDRE ) to confirm this situation.
“In any case, we still have time to take the pertinent measures to return to the stability that we had before. In this sense and given the abrupt increase that we have had in our indicators, we met with the committee of experts in Public Health to evaluate the situation and implement these measures that allow us, as far as possible, to find a balance between the care of health, as well as the family economy, “said the head of the SSY.
In this sense, Sauri Vivas recalled the prevention measures such as the use of face masks and healthy distance, which are essential to have an open economy, “because we cannot have businesses that increase capacity, but stop taking care of the use of masks because, again, the new normal does not allow us to be irresponsible with this “.
Likewise, the state official called on all people and all businesses to be strict with the application of health prevention measures, as well as parents, to take care of their young people and their families.
“We, as a Government, do our part to have the health system that our state requires, but we also need the responsibility of citizens so as not to compromise hospital capacity. In this way, today our economy and future development as a state depend on how well we behave at this stage and on the progress we have made in the vaccination process, ”he said.
However, Sauri Vivas stressed that vaccination is a preventive measure, so we must continue to take care, since the vaccine does not exempt us from contracting the virus and infecting someone who may end up dying, “the vaccine is only a reinforcement for preventing the disease from developing into a serious outbreak again”.
For this reason, we hope that in the coming weeks the effectiveness of the vaccines of the age groups already vaccinated will come into operation and that the pressure on our health system will be released, which, although it is not compromised today, is It is important to stop the exponential growth of the indicators. Let’s prove once more that working together, as one, we can face any challenge, concluded the SSY holder.
Source: Yucatán ahora
