MEXICO CITY (AP) – Sometimes Latin American dance tunes on the radio – salsa, cambia, ranchera – bring a bit of cheer to the emergency room of Mexico City’s Ejusco Medio Hospital, which is operating better than normal due to the coronavirus epidemic.
The head of the emergency unit, Dr. Mart. Marta Patricia Mansilla says the cheerful soundtrack is a regular variation in a packed hospital, where some people kneel at the door of the emergency room and pray for relatives suffering from the disease.
It’s been eight months since the city-run Ajusco Medio Hospital was named one of the city’s nearly nine million specialized Seaweed-19 hospitals, and empty beds are rarely seen.
“The worst is yet to come,” Mansila said.
“And unfortunately, it makes us very bored,” he said of medical personnel who are constantly working when they are susceptible to disease. About 2,000 healthcare workers in Mexico have been confirmed dead from the disease.
The toll is psychological and physical, and it is as clear as Dr. Ale, the director of Ajusco Medio Hospital. Number written on erasable whiteboard in Alejandro Avlos office fee: total patient capacity is 122%, intensive care is 116%, and emergency unit at 100%.
“We are not below 100% since May,” whose hospital – a government facility that treats patients for free – has been temporarily expanded to meet the wave of coronavirus cases. Across the city, there was a business. %% in hospitals this week.
Yet as full as the city’s hospitals are, its streets are once again nailed; In some more central parts of the metropolis, almost everyone wears a face mask, but in other poorer, outlying areas, fewer people do.
Officials are concerned about the situation. Millions usually gather every year for the December 12 holiday of Guadalupe Day, the Holy Virgin of Mexico, and large family gatherings are common in Mexico for Christmas.
On Friday, he appealed to President Andr લs Manuel Lઝpez Obrador, who ordered the expansion of more than 50,000 hospital beds in Mexico City and urged Mexico to stop crowding the streets and stay home in December.
“This month, in December, there are traffic problems, the number of vehicles on the streets is increasing,” the president said. “Right now, we can’t act like this.”
Lopez Obrador announced new recruits to help tired medical personnel. “There’s a lot of fatigue, fatigue,” he said.
At least 13,800 people have died in Mexico City alone, according to official figures. Officials say the number is likely to increase in part due to limited testing, especially in the early months of the epidemic.
Methods have improved since the city’s hospitals were filled in May and June, when patients were treated in the hallway and even relatives of the deceased were not allowed to enter the hospital for identification of the corpse. Case mortality has been significantly reduced at Avlos Hospital, but with the improvement has come emotional costs as well.
“Our way of thinking has changed,” Avalos said. “We’ve learned to cry with people, to grieve with people, to understand people better.”
On Friday, the mayor did not raise the city back to the maximum warning level, as some had expected, and employers feared it would have to shut down commercially. But Shinbaum said measures taken during the previous maximum warning would resume, including urging people to voluntarily secede, suspending unnecessary local government activities and limiting the number of people entering the capital’s colonial-era city at one time. Including authorizing checkpoints. Time.
The patience of health care professionals seems to be exhausted. Last week, a group of doctors and nurses at the city’s largest La Reza state hospital, signed an open letter, threatening to stop treating COVID-19 patients until the city’s partial lockdown was announced, as was the case in the spring. .
“If it was bad in May, it’s worse now,” said one doctor who signed the letter and asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation. “There are fewer doctors,” he said, “because of infections or because doctors take absentee leaves because they can’t cope with pressure, fear and overwork.
Even worse, anesthesia medications are running out to successfully take patients and keep them on a ventilator. “It’s a shame that some patients have to take their own PCR tests and find a hospital that will take them, because there are no beds,” he said. He noted
López Obrador denies any drastic lockdown and says such measures undermine “dictatorship”.
There are some wins; At Ajusco Medio Hospital, one in 36 patients on a ventilator has been connected to the machine and is recovering. A child was born, separate from his mother who has Covid-19.
The hospital has set up tents to treat patients coming out and treat patients; Some could be sent home with drugs, others admitted. Which could lead to a huge increase in the number of people being treated by the hospital.
But the signs of wear are clear: after scanning nearly 4,500 lungs to detect coronavirus damage in recent months, the hospital’s CT scan machine is being repaired.
The mental toll is also evident for patients who survive.
Maria Eugenia Ortiz, 51, and her husband – both of whom were infected – were sent home with drugs as they arrived at the hospital for a third checkup. She chose to endure the disease at home because she was terrified of the hospital. In his worst moments, he was struggling to breathe. Fourteen of his friends and relatives have died of the disease.
“Everything will turn black and I’ll feel like I’m floating,” Ortiz recalled. “My chest was empty and cold.”
Now, Ortiz feels more confident in doctors.
“Before, the doctors wouldn’t help you. There was more fear. We don’t know what to do.”
But attitudes are slowly changing; Medical personnel still question whether city residents are taking the epidemic seriously.
“We’re getting more and more bored,” said a doctor at La Reza Hospital who contracted the infection himself. “In Mexico, killing people is not a disease in itself as a result of lack of information, epidemics and poor public awareness. After working in a 24 hour shift, one gets frustrated seeing the full shopping centers. “
Emergency director Mansila said: “Why do we put ourselves at risk if people don’t pay attention?” There is such a feeling. This is getting out of hand, and it’s hard to continue this way. “
.
