Wednesday, October 15, 2025

Covid-19 fear fuels aggression against medical personnel

The growing Covid-19 outbreak and the associated fear are fueling aggression against healthcare workers on the frontline of the response to the contagious disease.

Several incidents of aggression and harassment have been reported recently, triggering a plea from federal authorities to show solidarity with the nation’s medical personnel.

In Jalisco, the president of the state’s Inter-institutional Commission of Nurses, Edith Mujica Chavez, denounced both physical aggression against nurses, including attacks with bleach solutions, and verbal harassment.

In a letter to Governor Enrique Alfaro, the commission asked for help from state authorities and for the aggression to be publicly condemned.

“We all know we are potentially at risk in public health, but violence can never be tolerated, even though we are afraid of catching coronavirus,” the letter said. “We have to maintain our mental health and share information so that [people] know nurses are not enemies of society.”

The Associated Press reported that medical personnel at one hospital in Guadalajara, Jalisco’s capital, were told not to wear their scrubs or uniforms when traveling to and from work because some public buses were not allowing them to board.

In Yucatán, a nurse in the state capital Mérida recounted in a Facebook post an attack to which he was subjected.

“While I was waiting for my ride, two people on a motorcycle threw an egg at my uniform,” wrote Rafael Ramírez, a nurse at a public clinic.

“I didn’t think these kinds of things happened in our city. I felt powerless not being able to do anything while they rode on laughing. We don’t deserve it. Am I afraid to go to work? Of course I am,” he wrote.

In Morelos, a small state that borders southern Mexico City, residents of the town of Axochiapan last week threatened to burn down their local hospital if it accepted any patients infected with Covid-19, while an unidentified person doused the doors of a new hospital in Sabinas Hidalgo, Nuevo León, with a flammable liquid this week.

Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell addressed the acts of violence and harassment at the government’s coronavirus press briefing on Monday night.

“There have been cases, you could say isolated, but all outrageous,” he said. “Fear produces irrational reactions, reactions that make no sense, have no foundation and have no justification,” López-Gatell added.

The deputy minister charged that the aggression is “even more outrageous” considering that it has been targeted at “health professionals that we all depend on in this moment because they are on the front lines facing this epidemic.”

He demanded that the attacks and harassment stop, declaring that law enforcement authorities will seek to punish those responsible.

Victor Hugo Borja, a medial director at the Mexican Social Security Institute, also condemned the aggression, pointing out that it threatened the public health system’s capacity to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.

“To threaten the physical safety of medical personnel or to affect the functioning and operation of the hospital infrastructure dedicated in this moment to the health emergency puts at risk the capacity of response that the population requires,” he said.

Source: AP (en) 

Have something to say? Paid Subscribers get all access to make & read comments.
The project turns Highway 58 into a four-lane highway and links it with Federal Highway 57 and 85, both of which travel from Mexico City to the U.S. border.

Nuevo León inaugurates first phase of US $1.2B Interserrana Highway

0
Nuevo León Governor Samuel García said the highway modernization project will streamline freight transportation and expedite travel to the northern border, while also cutting travel times from southern Nuevo León to Monterrey.
U.S. visa

More than 50 Morena-affiliated politicians have had their US visas revoked

6
More than 50 politicians from the ruling Morena party have had their visas revoked, along with dozens of officials from other political parties, according to an insider tapped by Reuters.
David Cohen

Lawyer for high-profile defendants shot dead outside of Mexico City courthouse

3
David Cohen Sacal, a lawyer with the firm Cohen Medina Chávez and former defender of Cruz Azul president "Billy" Álvarez, was shot at point-blank range outside the Ciudad Judicial court complex in the Doctores neighborhood of Mexico City on Monday.
BETA Version - Powered by Perplexity