Virus strikes at Mexico City airport: traffic plunged 94% in May

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June 24, 2020

Quiet times at the Mexico City airport. — Quiet times at Benito Juárez International.

Not unexpectedly, traffic took a dive at Mexico City’s Benito Juárez International Airport last month as the coronavirus continued to take a toll.

The number of travelers dropped by 93.7% compared to the same month last year. Passenger numbers dropped to 275,975 from 4.34 million in 2019.

The decrease was slightly more pronounced in May than it had been in April when the number of air travelers fell by 92.8%.

During the first five months of 2020 the airport saw a 44% drop in passengers, with 8.79 million fewer travelers passing through its terminals, the greatest decrease in travel ever recorded at the airport.

While January and February of this year showed a consistent growth rate of 8%, when the coronavirus pandemic hit in March numbers quickly plummeted and would only get worse.

The Benito Juárez airport, which employs some 35,000 people and is the largest in Latin America, saw more than 50 million passengers in 2019, and had been experiencing steady growth for the past eight years.

The airlines are feeling the pain as well. Mexico’s largest national airline, Aeroméxico, saw traffic decline by 91% in April and 92.4% in May. Volaris saw a 90% reduction in passengers during the same period.

Embattled discount airline Interjet has returned nearly 60 of its planes to leasing companies in recent months, is only operating three aircraft in its fleet and is being sued by the city of Chicago for US $2.56 million in unpaid airport fees.

The reduced number of passengers also translates into a marked decrease in airport taxes, which serve as a guarantee for the payment of US $4.2 billion that the government owes to holders of international bonds that financed the canceled airport project in Texcoco.

Earlier this month the government also announced the cancellation of a project to add a third terminal to the Benito Juárez airport.

“Due to the pandemic, the operational needs have changed. The demand of passengers in the air industry, in Mexico and elsewhere, has fallen a great deal, and it will take between two and four years to recover the levels we had in February 2020,” the government said in a statement.

By that time the General Felipe Ángeles International Airport in nearby Santa Lucía is expected to be open.

Peter Cerdá, the vice president for the Americas of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), confirmed that air traffic in Mexico will take at least three years to recover.

Globally, 93% of airline routes have been canceled, and losses to the airline industry this year are estimated to approach US $84 billion with US $16 billion in losses projected for 2021, IATA says.

Source: El Financiero (sp), Prensa Latina (en), Simple Flying (en), Financial Post (en)

AMLO confirms Washington meeting with US President Trump

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Susy Buchanan

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June 24, 2020

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López Obrador and Trump will meet in July.

President López Obrador announced Wednesday that he will travel to Washington “very soon” to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump.

At his daily press briefing, López Obrador said the meeting would celebrate the July 1 entry into force of the new trade treaty between Mexico, the United States and Canada.

“It will be soon, we are just waiting to define the character of the meeting. We want the prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, to participate as well,” López Obrador added.

This will be the first trip that López Obrador has made abroad since he assumed the presidency in December 2018.

The visit to Washington, D.C., will most likely take place shortly after July 1, when the Mexican president will hold a ceremony to commemorate the two-year anniversary of his victory in the 2018 presidential election.

López Obrador indicated that the exact date will be confirmed later this week.

At a press conference in Yuma, Arizona, Tuesday, Trump commented that illegal migration has decreased 84% over last year and illegal crossings of Central Americans have dropped 97%. The president thanked López Obrador for his efforts.

“If you look at so many of the different crimes that come through the border, they’re stopped. We’ve implemented groundbreaking agreements with Mexico. I want to thank the president of Mexico. He’s really a great guy,” Trump said. “I think he’ll be coming into Washington pretty soon, to the White House.”

Critics of López Obrador are skeptical that the meeting will be beneficial for Mexico, where Trump is not generally well-liked, and did not mince words.

In a post to Twitter, the former Mexican ambassador to the United States, Arturo Sarukhán, called the potential visit “a big blunder and a mistake,” saying that Trump would only use the Mexican president as an electoral prop.

In an interview earlier this month Sarukhán called such a visit “suicidal for Mexico’s long-term and strategic relationship with the United States.”

He told journalist León Krauze that López Obrador runs the risk of being perceived as a Trump ally.

Former foreign minister Jorge Castañeda told Reuters he thought a visit was “a dumb idea” considering it is an election year in the United States.

Source: El Financiero (sp), The Hill (en)

Spanish firm reported to have canceled US $1.2-billion investment

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MND Staff

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June 24, 2020

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The Spanish firm Iberdrola has been a major investor in Mexico's energy sector. — Iberdrola has been a major investor in Mexico's energy sector.

The Spanish energy company Iberdrola is canceling a US $1.2-billion project in Veracruz, according to government officials.

The mayor of Tuxpan told the news agency Bloomberg that representatives of the firm told him that it was canceling its combined-cycle plant in the city because in nine months it has been unable to reach a natural gas supply agreement with the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE).

“The company received orders from corporate headquarters in Spain to leave. They had everything ready and were just waiting on the gas contract to get started,” Juan Antonio Aguilar Mancha said.

In a separate interview with the newspaper Reforma, the mayor expressed regret about the decision, explaining that the project would have generated 2,000 local jobs.

However, Aguilar told Bloomberg that Iberdrola could continue with the project if it reaches a gas supply deal with the CFE or TC Energy (formerly TransCanada Corporation) in the next two weeks.

He said the firm has been working on the project for more than a year and has spent about $40 million thus far to purchase land, obtain permits and pay workers. Construction of the plant was scheduled to begin in July.

Reforma and Bloomberg asked Iberdrola to comment on the cancellation but it declined.

Meanwhile, Veracruz Governor Cuitláhuac García tweeted on Wednesday that the Tuxpan plant will go ahead but the CFE will operate it.

“I spoke with … [federal] Energy Minister Rocío Nahle and she confirmed that the Tuxpan project remains but it’s a CFE project. The state company will call for bids for its construction … [and] Veracruz companies will have the opportunity to work on it,” he wrote.

News of Iberdrola’s decision to cancel the project and its apparent takeover by the CFE comes two weeks after President López Obrador claimed that the Spanish company has a monopoly in Mexico’s electricity sector.

He said Iberdrola produces almost half of the power injected into the national grid by private companies and accused the firm of improper conduct because it has hired former federal energy officials.

If Iberdrola’s cancellation of its power plant is confirmed, it will be the first major investment cancellation in the electricity sector since the federal government announced a new energy policy that imposes restrictive measures on renewable energy and seeks to consolidate control of power generation in the CFE.

Bloomberg reported that it wasn’t clear whether Iberdrola’s inability to reach a gas supply deal with the CFE was related to the government’s stance on electricity generation by private companies or López Obrador’s recent criticism of the firm.

Iberdrola has invested heavily in Mexico and the Tuxpan plant was part of a $5-billion investment plan that includes other power generation facilities and a solar park.

The former government’s energy reform opened up greater investment opportunities for private and foreign firms but López Obrador now appears intent on limiting their participation.

He claimed last month that private companies, including those that generate clean, renewable energy from sources such as wind and solar, have provided “nothing” to the national electricity system even though data shows that they generate a significant proportion of the power used in Mexico, and at a cheaper price than the CFE.

The Federal Economic Competition Commission has warned that electricity rates could go up if the CFE ramps up energy production at the expense of new renewable energy projects but López Obrador has pledged that there will be no price hikes while he remains in office.

“I’m not going to break my commitment to maintain the price of electricity. … It won’t increase during my entire six-year term,” he said last week.

Source: Reforma (sp), Milenio (sp), Bloomberg (en)

Mexico’s crusade for healthy eating could hurt trade

By

Jude Webber

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June 24, 2020

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The president tucks into a meal of traditional food.

If Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico’s nationalist president, had more time to watch movies, he might like to tuck into a new documentary about one of the most passionate defenders of his country’s culinary traditions.

The film profiles Diana Kennedy, a 97-year-old Briton who has arguably done more than any other cookery writer alive to put Mexican cuisine on the map and preserve the unique ingredients and techniques of which López Obrador is so proud.

It would surely strike a chord with a president who included eating corn and beans, rather than processed meals, on his folksy 10-point plan for post-Covid living in a video this month. The timing was curious: he announced his decalogue, which also urged Mexicans to be optimistic, enjoy nature and pursue the path of spirituality, two weeks before the launch of an updated version of the free-trade treaty that boosted Mexico as a prime market for U.S. convenience food and high fructose corn syrup in the first place.

The US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, expands and replaces the North American Free Trade Agreement and comes into force on July 1.

The president’s crusade against junk food has been given a new urgency because of Covid-19, which is particularly dangerous for the nearly three-quarters of Mexicans who are overweight or obese and 16% who are diabetic. But it has also intensified pressure on processed food manufacturers who are major investors in Mexico and are upset at the plans to slap warning labels screaming “too much salt,” “too high in calories” or “too much fat” on snacks and sodas later this year.

Trade has helped processed food powerhouse Bimbo.

The move comes on top of investor-unfriendly decisions in other sectors, including a decision to scrap a partially built brewery owned by Constellation Brands of the U.S. in March, as well as abrupt policy shifts in the energy sector that have put Mexico on a collision course with USMCA partner companies.

The health crusade, which will begin next month and be taught in schools, conveniently overlooks the fact that Mexico exports some US $22 billion a year in processed food to the U.S., more than double the $9 billion in processed food products that it buys from its biggest trading partner. That has helped create Mexican processed food powerhouses, including Bimbo, the world’s largest bakery company, and Gruma, the leading tortilla maker.

López Obrador, who served mugs of hot chocolate and tamales to the country’s business elite at a dinner at the National Palace earlier this year, and who counts bean stews and a cacao and corn drink called pozol among his favourites dishes, urged Mexicans to “eat natural.”

“Let’s eat well, let’s opt for what is natural, fresh and nutritious,” he said in his video. “One alternative is corn, beans, vegetables, seasonal fruit, tuna and protein from animals . . . not fattened with hormones. Let’s avoid eating so-called junk made with excess sugars, flours, salts, chemicals and fats.”

Despite Unesco recognizing Mexico’s cuisine as a world heritage, U.S. fast-food chains such as Subway, Starbucks, McDonald’s and KFC line the streets. Mexico gave the world chocolate but U.S. companies Mars and Hershey’s are among the country’s top confectionery sellers. Mexico is also one of the biggest guzzlers of Coca-Cola while the president urges his compatriots to drink “plain water.”

Critics blame NAFTA for Mexico’s obesity epidemic and López Obrador’s health concerns are personal — he himself is hypertensive and had a heart attack in 2013. Yet he seems not to weigh the consequences his policies could have on trade in an increasingly integrated North America, even as he bets on USMCA to bring investment and haul Mexico out of the Covid-induced slump.

His advocacy for traditional foods is part of a wider vision to make Mexico self-sufficient. “Corn is native to our country and yet we are buying more corn than any other country in the world,” he fumed last year, blaming the policies of Carlos Salinas, the president who signed NAFTA.

If the president succeeds in changing eating habits, Mexicans could do worse than to try out Kennedy’s traditional techniques. “Read my books and learn, please,” she lectures in the film. “What are you going to do when I’m gone?”

Dust cloud will mean reddish sunsets, misty skies on Yucatán Peninsula

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Susy Buchanan

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June 24, 2020

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The dust cloud can produce spectacular sunsets. — The Sahara dust cloud can produce spectacular sunsets.

There’s a cloud of Saharan dust heading toward several states in Mexico which will make for misty skies and beautiful sunrises and sunsets — and possibly hazardous air quality conditions — over the next few days, federal officials report.

Beginning Wednesday, Yucatán, Quintana Roo and Campeche will be the first states to experience the dust cloud’s effects, followed by Veracruz and Tamaulipas as it moves northward toward the United States at the end of this week.

Each year some 100 million tonnes of dust are kicked up in mid-June by strong winds in the African desert, then the layer of dust, usually between three and four kilometers thick, is borne for up to 8,000 kilometers on the trade winds over the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.

The dust acts as a natural fertilizer and has been found to play a key role in restoring minerals to depleted rainforest soils in South America’s Amazon basin.

This year the dust cloud is more impressive than usual and measured some 6,500 kilometers in diameter as it hit Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

“In terms of concentration and density and size, it is the most dust we’ve seen in 50 or 60 years,” said Pablo Méndez Lázaro, an environmental health researcher at the University of Puerto Rico.

Dubbed by some as the “Godzilla dust cloud,” this one is massive enough to be viewed from space as the tiny particles make their way across the globe, appearing as wispy brown paintbrush strokes superimposed over oceans and land masses.

However, the dust clouds can also carry pathogens, and people with allergies or other respiratory ailments living in areas expected to be affected by the phenomenon are advised to take precautions such as wearing a face mask and staying indoors.

Source: El Financiero (sp), El Universal (sp), Livescience (en)

Baja aqueduct repainted to replace politically-tinted blue

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Susy Buchanan

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June 24, 2020

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National Action Party blue is no longer in style in Baja California.

The blue aqueduct that carries water from the Colorado River to Tijuana, Baja California, is being repainted brown, fulfilling a request made by President López Obrador in April.

The aqueduct, which climbs more than a thousand meters through the La Rumorosa mountains pumping water 104 kilometers from Mexicali through Tecate to Tijuana’s El Carrizo reservoir, had been bright blue for decades but will now be brown, according to a government statement.

On April 22, President López Obrador criticized the aesthetics of painting government infrastructure in unnatural colors that clash with the landscape, especially when those colors are representative of political parties.

Blue is the color used by Mexico’s National Action Party (PAN) which governed Baja California for 30 years before being toppled by the current governor, Jaime Bonilla Valdez. Like the president, he is a member of the Morena party.

“I suggested to the governor of Baja California, ‘paint the aqueduct the color of the stones,’ maybe it will not cost you much and will help to maintain it,” the president said, decrying the political tradition of painting government buildings, schools and infrastructure in the colors of the ruling party.

On Tuesday, Water Management Minister Salomón Faz Apodaca stressed that the paint being applied to the Río Colorado-Tijuana aqueduct is part of regular maintenance.

“With an environmentally friendly, polyurethane-based color, which is resistant to weather, rust and chemicals, we hope to reduce visual contamination in the desert area of Baja California,” he said in a statement.

Painting the aqueduct is part of a number of measures, including electrical and mechanical maintenance, being undertaken to improve the state’s hydraulic infrastructure. The municipalities of Tecate, Tijuana, Playas de Rosarito and Ensenada receive 98% of their water from the aqueduct.

Source: Reforma (sp), La Voz de la Frontera (sp)

Navy reports zero oil rig thefts by pirates since May 15

By

Susy Buchanan

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June 24, 2020

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A marine conducts vessel inspections. The navy has stepped up measures to combat piracy.

The Mexican navy reports that it has reduced pirate attacks on vessels in the Bay of Campeche in the southern Gulf of Mexico to zero after a new operation was put in place on May 15.

In recent years the waters off the coasts of Campeche, Tabasco and Veracruz have been plagued by armed bandits who attack oil platforms, and commercial and supply vessels.

The pirates often approach vessels in fast boats, board them and take anything of value, including crew members’ possessions and navigational equipment which they sell on the black market. Some even steal fuel directly from the Gulf’s more than 100 platforms operated by Mexico’s oil company, Pemex.

In May, the U.S. Maritime Administration (MARAD) reported that at least five pirate attacks occurred in a span of just 10 days in April, and the U.S. government has issued maritime travel safety alerts for Gulf of Mexico waters, with the latest one coming just last week.

Although pirates have hunted the waters of the Bay of Campeche for centuries, the modern-day version of thievery at sea began to increase dramatically in 2017 when 19 assaults or attempted assaults on vessels or platforms were reported, up from four in 2016 and one in 2015. In 2018 there were 16 reported attacks, 20 occurred in 2019 and so far this year 19 ships or platforms have been attacked by pirates.

However, the navy’s recent response appears to have been effective.

It has dispatched some 42 vessels of varying sizes, one airplane, four helicopters and more than 500 sailors to the area to conduct thousands of inspections, both onshore and at sea.

To date, the navy reports that 515 boats, 68 ships, 651 vehicles and 2,734 people have been inspected and interviewed by the military. The area has remained free of incidents since the operation began, although a number of minor citations have been issued.

Source: El Universal (sp), The New York Times (sp)

Quake kills six, damages 500 houses in Oaxaca; most damage is minor

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MND Staff

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June 24, 2020

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One of hundreds of buildings that sustained earthquake damage in Oaxaca. — One of hundreds of buildings that sustained damage in Oaxaca.

A 7.5-magnitude earthquake that shook southern and central Mexico on Tuesday morning damaged more than 500 homes in Oaxaca and left six people dead, authorities said.

The Oaxaca government said in a statement that most of the affected homes only sustained minor damage, while Governor Alejandro Murat confirmed the deaths of five men and one woman as a result of the quake, whose epicenter was located 23 kilometers south of La Crucecita, a town in the tourist destination of Huatulco.

More than 30 people were injured during the earthquake, Mexico’s 16th most powerful on record.

Homes and other buildings were damaged in at least 30 municipalities in Oaxaca, the newspaper Reforma reported, including 13 in the Central Valleys region, eight in the Sierra Sur, five on the state’s Pacific coast, three in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and one in the Mixtec region.

At least 15 hospitals and health care clinics in Oaxaca were damaged as were four schools. Three federal highways, five state highways and a bridge also sustained damage or were affected by landslides.

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A landslide on a highway in the municipality of San Juan Ozolotepec trapped two workers who were subsequently freed and taken to hospital, Murat said.

The governor said Wednesday morning that all of the affected roads are now open to traffic.

Some 50 historical monuments also sustained damage as a result of the earthquake as did structures at the archaeological sites of Mitla, Dainzú, Lambityeco and Yagul.

In Huatulco, the fire hall sustained severe damage but firefighters continued to provide services to the local community on Tuesday.

A fire broke out at the Pemex refinery in the coastal city of Salina Cruz shortly after the quake but was quickly put out. Early reports said that a refinery worker died from burns after the earthquake triggered an explosion but the federal government said later that his death was the result of a fall from a five-meter-high structure.

The Oaxaca government said that 2,300 members of the military were deployed to respond to the earthquake, explaining that they assessed damage and removed rubble, among other tasks.

Earthquake rubble on a street in Oaxaca.

The earthquake hit Oaxaca the hardest but was felt in 11 other states: Mexico City, México state, Guerrero, Chiapas, Michoacán, Jalisco, Querétaro, Morelos, Tabasco, Veracruz and Puebla.

Hundreds of aftershocks have been reported since the quake struck at 10:29 a.m. Tuesday including one with a magnitude of 5.5.

The Federal Electricity Commission reported that the earthquake affected the supply of power to more than 2.6 million customers in several states.

While Oaxaca bore the brunt of the quake, damage was also reported in other parts of the country.

In México state, both the General Hospital in Chalco and an IMSS health care facility in Ecatepec sustained minor damage, while water supply to the municipality of Nezahualcóyotl was interrupted.

In Veracruz, the earthquake caused a phosphoric acid spill at an industrial plant in the port city of Coatzacoalcos, the newspaper Milenio reported.

In Mexico City, where the sounding of the seismic alarm sent residents rushing to the street to seek safety in the open air, two people were reportedly injured and 36 buildings sustained minor damage.

Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said that four Mexico City government buildings were damaged. The worst damage occurred at offices of the water department, where a staircase became detached as a result of the powerful seismic waves that reached the capital from the quake epicenter about 700 kilometers away.

In the northern borough of Gustavo A. Madero, a five-story residential building sustained structural damage, forcing the residents of all 40 apartments to evacuate.

Yesterday’s temblor came almost three years after two powerful earthquakes devastated southern and central Mexico in September 2017.

Mexico is located within two active earthquake zones, making tremors a common occurrence and occasional temblors an unavoidable fact of life.

Source: Milenio (sp), Reforma (sp)

New single-day record set but minister sees positive signs in movement of virus numbers

By

MND Staff

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June 24, 2020

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20% of Mexicans who tested positive for coronavirus are healthcare workers

A new single-day record for Covid-19 cases was set on Tuesday but Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell asserted that the coronavirus pandemic has been stabilizing for more than two weeks.

The federal Health Ministry reported 6,288 additional cases at Tuesday night’s coronavirus press briefing, increasing the total number of accumulated cases to 191,410.

Just over 20% of people who have tested positive for Covid-19 are health workers.

The Health Ministry also reported 793 additional Covid-19 fatalities, lifting Mexico’s official death toll to 23,377.

Director of Epidemiology José Luis Alomía said that 24,387 cases are considered active – an increase of 1,232 compared to Monday – and that there are 59,106 suspected cases across the country.

The daily tally of coronavirus cases and deaths. Deaths are numbers reported and not necessarily those that occurred each day. milenio

Mexico passed a Covid-19 testing milestone on Tuesday, with more than half a million tests now completed.

However, Mexico’s testing rate – about 3,900 people have been tested per 1 million inhabitants – is still very low compared to most countries in the region and beyond.

Health Ministry data shows that just over 60,000 coronavirus patients have been hospitalized since the start of the pandemic, a figure that accounts for almost one in every three people who have tested positive.

Of that number, 5,402 patients – about one in 12 – were placed on ventilators. Almost 70% of patients who were intubated ended up dying.

More than 130,000 people who tested positive for Covid-19 were not hospitalized, of whom 2,471 died in their homes.

Mexico City leads the country for Covid-19 deaths, with 5,656 fatalities as of Tuesday, according to official data. México state has the second highest death toll, with 3,515 fatalities, followed by Baja California, Veracruz and Sinaloa.

Active coronavirus cases as of Tuesday. milenio

In addition to the 23,377 confirmed Covid-19 deaths, 1,848 fatalities are suspected of having been caused by the disease.

Mexico City also leads the country for accumulated and active coronavirus cases, with 43,596 of the former and 3,906 of the latter. Neighboring México state ranks second in both categories, having recorded a total of 30,011 cases of which 2,343 are considered active.

Six other states have more than 1,000 active cases: Puebla, Guanajuato, Tabasco, Veracruz, Tamaulipas and Jalisco.

At the municipal level, Puebla city has the most active cases followed by León, Guanajuato, and Iztapalapa, Mexico City.

In the first 23 days of June, the Health Ministry reported a total of 100,746 additional Covid-19 cases, a figure that equates to 53% of the total number of cases detected in Mexico throughout the pandemic. Health officials reported 13,447 deaths, 58% of the total, in the same period.

An average of 4,380 new cases and 585 deaths were reported every day between June 1 and June 23, a period which coincides with the first three weeks of the so-called new normal during which some coronavirus restrictions have been eased.

Covid-19 deaths recorded as of Tuesday. milenio

But while the statistics are alarming, Deputy Health Minister López-Gatell highlighted that the rate of growth in case numbers has slowed in percentage terms this month.

Speaking at the presidential press conference on Tuesday, the government’s coronavirus point man said that starting “about 16 days ago, we’ve had increases [in case numbers] in percentage terms that are smaller” than those recorded perviously.

López-Gatell acknowledged that the percentage increases are in comparison with an increasingly higher number of total cases and that about 5,000 cases per day were reported in the period but stressed that “the day to day change in terms of percentage increases is decreasing in speed.”

That is “positive news,” he said before adding: “Of course, it’s still not satisfactory while this number of deaths are occurring every day.”

Source: El Universal (sp), Milenio (sp)

Covid at Ground Zero: solitude was the worst, says doctor who survived

By

Susy Buchanan

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June 23, 2020

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Dr. González: risk of infection was always troubling.

Emotions run high among medical staff who treat coronavirus patients, and their devotion to their profession often means being ostracized by society and isolation from family members in addition to the long hours spent on the front lines of the pandemic.

For Dr. Omar William González Hernández the worst part of the disease was the solitude and not being able to hug his children.

An internist who specializes in geriatrics, González works during the week at one government hospital and spends his weekends working at another.

Conditions at the hospitals are less than ideal, he reports, and the risk of infection was always troubling.

“The lack of personnel training, the lack of adequate equipment and the delay in implementing security protocols, as well as the greater number of infected colleagues and the greater number of patients treated, make it more feasible for me to have been infected there,” says González.

And his fears were realized. When he began to experience coronavirus symptoms, he had to take precautions to protect his family, such as not sleeping in the same room with his wife and sending his young children to stay with their grandparents.

After suffering from a fever and breathing problems, the doctor was diagnosed with the coronavirus and hospitalized at the same hospital where he works, which is likely where he was infected too.

“The moment they told me that I was going to be hospitalized I began to assimilate all those fears that my family shared with me, that it really could become something serious or that it could even cost me my life,” he says.

The most difficult thing for him during the six days of hospitalization and the three weeks of recovery was the isolation and loneliness that the disease imposes on patients who cannot have contact with their relatives.

However, González says his main goal was to get better and return to work and rejoin his family.

“Once the disease is over, one of the most emotional parts, I think, is when you regain your freedom to leave home, to go to work again,” González says. “But I think the most emotional part is being able to see my children.”

Despite becoming infected due to the lack of protective equipment in his workplace, González returned to the hospitals to continue to help the sick. “We have a duty and commitment to our profession, in addition to the need for staff because, due to fear, many do not want to participate.”

Source: El Financiero (sp)