Governor Mendoza tours the Los Cabos Covid-19 hospital.
A hospital in Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, has been equipped to increase its capacity to treat patients suffering from Covid-19, Governor Carlos Mendoza Davis announced on Thursday.
“The reconversion of medical spaces for the specific attention to patients with this disease is one of the strategies that we’re prioritizing in the state in order to protect the health and lives of the residents of Baja California Sur,” he said.
The Cabo San Lucas General Hospital already had a fully-staffed unit that was treating coronavirus patients, but it was located in the general emergency services area. The facility will now solely treat confirmed or suspected cases of Covid-19.
“Given that [Los Cabos] is the municipality with the most cases of Covid-19 in [the state], we’ve determined that the [state Health Ministry hospital] in Cabo San Lucas will be dedicated exclusively to the treatment of patients with Covid-19 during the pandemic,” Mendoza tweeted on Thursday.
A 33-bed mobile hospital acquired by the state government will soon be set up outside the facility in order to reinforce the effort to combat the virus.
“This reconversion … was done in this hospital because of its location in one of the most populated neighborhoods in the municipality and which has the highest number of cases …” said Mendoza.
The federal government has approved almost 700,000 loans for small and family businesses to support them amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The director of the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) said on Wednesday that 40,255 loans of 25,000 pesos (US $1,040) each have been transferred to small business owners to help them pay the salaries of their employees.
Zoé Robledo said that more than 97,000 loan applications have been approved by IMSS. The institute intends to distribute more than 642,000 loans to small business owners who have committed to maintaining their full workforces and paying their employees their full salaries during the coronavirus pandemic.
Borrowers are required to start making repayments in August and will have a period of three years to complete them. Loans are repayable at the central bank’s benchmark rate, which is currently 6%.
Economy Minister Graciela Márquez announced separately on Wednesday that the department she leads has approved 577,916 loans for family-run businesses forced to close due to the coronavirus crisis.
The loans, also worth 25,000 pesos each, will be transferred to the businesses’ bank accounts starting on May 4, Márquez said.
The Economy Ministry intends to distribute a total of 1 million loans to family businesses in urban areas. To qualify, the businesses’ workforces must primarily be made up of members of the owner’s family. The loans will also be repayable over three years at the Bank of México rate.
President López Obrador has pledged to provide a total of 3 million loans to poor and middle-class Mexicans to help them through the coronavirus-induced economic downturn.
The economy shrank 2.4% in the first quarter of the year compared to the same period last year but the contraction is predicted to be much bigger in the second quarter as many businesses will remain closed at least until the end of May.
A new report has ranked Mexico No. 4 out of 117 countries for budget transparency, up three points since 2017. And a federal cabinet minister was quick to recognize President López Obrador for the achievement despite the fact he was only president for one month during the year in question.
Public Administration (SFP) Minister Irma Eréndira Sandoval celebrated the ranking in the International Budget Partnership’s Open Budget Survey 2019, congratulating López Obrador in tweets posted on Wednesday.
“With President @lopezobrador and the work of @SFP_mx we have demonstrated an unprecedented level of control and budget transparency,” she wrote.
However, López Obrador wasn’t president for the full year on which the ranking was based. The “unprecedented level of control” was an achievement of the Enrique Peña Nieto administration: data for the index was from 2018.
López Obrador was president for just one month during that year after taking office in December.
Mexico’s score of 82 was well above the average score of 45 for the countries surveyed. The report showed 75% of participating countries do not meet budget transparency standards.
The survey found that in 2019 Mexico provided a more complete mid-year review, but could still do better about providing information on financial risks associated with its executive budget.
Mexico’s public participation score, meaning the amount of access the public has to different stages of the budget process, was 35, well above the global average of 13. The survey recommended more inclusive measures when formulating budgets, including reaching out to underserved communities.
The survey is part of an independent global research and advocacy program to promote public access to budget information and accountable budget systems.
The United States received a score of 76 for 2109, and Canada’s score was 71.
Nurse Iván Portillo moves into new digs after he was evicted.
An eviction and a bleach attack are two of the latest forms of harassment medical staff around Mexico are facing as members of the public shun them or worse for fear of contracting the coronavirus.
A young doctor in Oaxaca reported that one of his patients brought a syringe filled with bleach to an appointment, and once it was over reprimanded him for working when he “must be coronavirus-positive” and squirted his scrubs with bleach to “disinfect” him.
The doctor has been practicing in the small town of Tezoatlán de Segura y Luna in southwest Oaxaca’s Mixtec region for the past three years.
“You cannot attack those who help care for you,” he said in a letter of complaint to the state’s Ministry of Health.
Oaxaca was the first state to amend the criminal code to call for jail time for those who attack medical personnel, although some doctors and nurses are reluctant to report attacks to authorities for fear of further retaliation.
Oaxaca’s Attorney General’s Office has been asked to investigate alleged attacks on medical personnel and to punish those found responsible.
In Hermosillo, where authorities have also condemned attacks on medical personnel, nurse Iván Portillo posted on Facebook that his landlord had evicted him from his home due to fears he could spread the virus.
On Sunday, Portillo said his landlord sent him a WhatsApp message asking him to vacate his second-floor apartment in the home due to the risk of infection.
He tried to protest the decision and explained sanitary precautions taken at the hospital where he works but to no avail.
Portillo has since moved into a shelter set up for government health workers who may need to self-isolate and healthcare workers in general. The 30-bed hostel is sponsored by Sonoran families and businesses.
At least 21 medical workers in 12 states across Mexico have been attacked, said Fabiana Zepeda Arias, chief of nursing for Mexico’s Social Security Institute, at a press conference on Monday. “We can save your lives,” she pleaded. “Please help us take care of you, and for that, we need you to take care of us.”
On the plus side, musicians and dancers have serenaded health workers in various states and private citizens and businesses have shown their appreciation by providing them with meals and other support since the virus outbreak began.
Mexico’s economy shrank 2.4% in the first quarter of the year compared to the same period of 2019, according to preliminary data published on Thursday.
The contraction is the worst since the third quarter of 2009 when the ongoing effects of the global financial crisis caused a year-over-year GDP decline of 5%.
The first-quarter seasonally adjusted data from the national statistics agency Inegi comes amid the worsening coronavirus outbreak in Mexico.
However, the federal government’s social distancing initiative didn’t start until March 23 and nonessential businesses were allowed to remain open until the end of that month, meaning that the main economic impact of the pandemic will not be reflected in official data until second-quarter figures are released.
The preliminary Inegi data shows that secondary activities including manufacturing declined 3.8% between January and March compared to the first quarter of 2019, while the services sector shrank by 1.4%. The primary sector of the economy, including agriculture and fishing, performed better, growing 1.2% compared to the first quarter of last year.
The overall annual contraction of the economy was 0.8% larger than the 1.6% reduction between the last quarter of 2019 and the first quarter of 2020. Inegi will publish a final estimate for the economy’s first-quarter performance on May 26.
With many businesses currently closed and millions of Mexicans staying at home as much as possible to help limit the spread of Covid-19, the contraction is predicted to be much sharper this year.
The International Monetary Fund is predicting that GDP will decline by 6.6% in 2020 as a result of the “great lockdown” but some banks are forecasting that the economy will take an even bigger hit.
President López Obrador has been criticized for his economic response to the coronavirus crisis, with some analysts saying that his plan will hinder rather than help growth.
The president has said repeatedly that his administration will not increase public debt to support the economy amid the pandemic nor will it give tax breaks to large companies or bail them out should they face collapse.
Police arrest a man in Jalisco for not wearing a face mask.
Police in Tala, Jalisco, on Sunday handcuffed, shoved and berated a man who says he went out to get food for his family with a mask in his hands rather than on his face, according to a video on social media.
When the video of the encounter, recorded by disgusted nearby merchants, reached the social media feed of Oscar-winning film director Guillermo del Toro, the Jalisco filmmaker brought it to the attention of Governor Enrique Alfaro Ramírez in a scathing pair of tweets Wednesday afternoon.
“Enrique Alfaro, maybe I don’t understand things, but this is a time that requires compassion and judgment, and not this,” del Toro wrote. His tweet initially drew more than 9,600 reactions, as well as 4,400 retweets. “Definition of brutality: excessive and irrational action without compassion. This is a citizen in the middle of a pandemic. Not a criminal,” the filmmaker also tweeted.
The arrest comes after Alfaro issued a stern warning to the 8.25 million residents of the western Mexican state last Sunday: stay home, practice social distancing and wear masks. Those who refuse will face consequences, including fines. “Everyone’s lives are at stake,” he said at the time, describing those who ignored the measures as “assholes.”
During Sunday’s video, before the man was eventually taken away under arrest, he argued with uniformed police officers. “I just came to buy my food and leave, why do you want to take me?” he protests. “I didn’t have a face mask, and they already gave me one.”
“Vine a comprar mi comida. ¿Por qué me quieres llevar?”, expresa tapatío luego de que policías de Alfaro lo detuvieran arbitrariamente
Police also scolded the merchant filming the encounter, who was wearing a mask, for not enforcing coronavirus guidelines among his customers.
Alfaro, for his part, responded to del Toro’s tweet by claiming the officers involved were local police from Tala, not state authorities.
Alfaro said he had already spoken with Tala’s mayor, and was working with him to investigate the incident and make sure it does not happen again.
“The rules we put in place need to be followed, but that does not mean that we will tolerate abuses by any authority,” Alfaro said on his Twitter account.
Del Toro, who left Mexico after his father was kidnapped in 1997, has been critical of government officials before.
In 2014, he and fellow directors Alfonso and Jonas Cuarón and Alejandro G. Iñárritu read a statement at a Museum of Modern Art film benefit in New York denouncing the Mexican government’s handling of the disappearance of 43 student protesters.
The following year, del Toro used his platform at the Guadalajara Film Fest to speak out against drug violence in the country. “It’s one thing to talk about a social crisis, but another to talk about absolute social decay,” he said.
As of Thursday morning, the two-minute video of the incident Tala had been viewed more than 340,000 times on social media.
More than 1,000 new Covid-19 cases were reported on Wednesday and Mexico recorded its biggest single-day increase in its coronavirus death toll but the nation’s health system is not overwhelmed, according to data presented by the federal Health Ministry.
Director of Epidemiology José Luis Alomía said that 1,047 new Covid-19 cases had been detected, taking Mexico’s accumulated total of cases to 17,799. He also reported 163 new fatalities from the disease, lifting the death toll to 1,732 – a 10% jump compared to Tuesday.
Of the confirmed cases, 5,444 are considered active, Alomía told reporters at the nightly coronavirus press briefing. Mexico City has the highest number of active cases followed by México state, Tabasco, Baja California and Veracruz. Among those currently ill are 16 babies.
In addition to the confirmed cases, Alomía said that there are 13,263 suspected Covid-19 cases across the country. Almost 82,000 people have now been tested for the disease, he said.
Despite the growing outbreak of Covid-19 in Mexico – confirmed cases have now more than doubled since the government declared the commencement of phase three of the pandemic on Tuesday of last week – there are still plenty of beds available across the country’s public health system, data shows.
Accumulated coronavirus cases by state. milenio
Alomía presented graphs showing 77% availability of hospital beds for patients requiring general care and 79% availability for patients needing critical care and access to a ventilator. In other words, only just over one in five public hospital beds are currently occupied in Mexico.
However, data for individual states shows that the availability of hospital beds is much lower in those that have large Covid-19 outbreaks.
In Mexico City, where almost 4,800 people have tested positive, there is only 40% availability for patients requiring general care and 49% availability of critical care beds.
In México state and Baja California, which have the second and third biggest Covid-19 outbreaks, availability of general care beds is 59% and 56%, respectively, while for critical care beds it is 60% and 56%.
The health system in some states that have not recorded large Covid-19 outbreaks are under greater pressure than those in some other states with much higher case numbers.
Querétaro, where only 128 people have tested positive for Covid-19, has the fourth lowest availability of general care beds at 65%, while San Luis Potosí, where just 98 coronavirus cases have been detected, has the third lowest availability of critical care beds at 57%.
Director of Epidemiology Alomía, Health Minister Jorge Alcocer and Deputy Minister Hugo López-Gatell at the daily coronavirus briefing.
In contrast, the state with the sixth highest number of cases in the country, Quintana Roo, has 98% availability of general care beds and 95% availability of critical care beds.
Although data shows that there are still plenty of critical care beds available, the percentage of patients requiring them rose sharply on Wednesday. About one in five Covid-19 patients, 21%, are now in critical care beds compared to one in seven, 14%, the day before.
Alomía said Tuesday that between 60% and 80% of critically-ill Covid-19 patients who have required intubation have died.
The death toll on Wednesday – 163 new fatalities – exceeded the previous high of 152 by 7%. Since the government’s phase three declaration, the Health Ministry has reported 1,020 coronavirus-related deaths, meaning that almost 60% of all fatalities in Mexico occurred in the past nine days.
Mexico City has recorded the highest number of deaths with 389 followed by Baja California and México state, where 215 and 143 people, respectively, have lost their lives. Sinaloa, Tabasco and Quintana Roo have the next highest death tolls with more than 100 fatalities in each state.
Dr. Pepe Porras died after treating coronavirus patients for three weeks.
A beloved Mexico City doctor passed away last week at the age of just 38 after contracting Covid-19 while treating patients with the contagious disease.
José Porras González, an emergency doctor at the IMSS 30 General Hospital in the borough of Iztacalco, died on April 21, eight days after he began feeling unwell.
Before falling ill, Porras had been treating coronavirus patients for three weeks, the newspaper El Universal reported, noting that he had to buy his own personal protective equipment because there was none at the hospital.
Pepe, as the doctor was known to his many friends and colleagues, initially isolated himself at his home after he developed Covid-19 symptoms but was hospitalized when his condition deteriorated.
Porras suffered from both diabetes and obesity, conditions that made him particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus that has claimed the lives of more than 225,000 people around the world.
A banner hangs outside the hospital where he worked. ‘So long, Dr. Pepe Porras,’ it reads. ‘Thank you.’
A 24-year-old niece of the doctor who said that Porras had been like a father figure to her after she lost her dad told El Universal that her uncle sacrificed his life to care for others.
“He wanted to be on the front line because his mission was always to save people’s lives, … he had a great desire to help people,” said Jazmín Porras.
She said that he had no fear of treating Covid-19 patients, explaining that he was in fact excited to be in a position to help Mexico respond to the pandemic. Porras loved his job with IMSS – the Mexican Social Security Institute – she added, explaining that he met his wife there.
The passing of the doctor, a medicine graduate of the National Autonomous University, triggered an outpouring of emotion from his colleagues and friends.
A video posted to social media shows Porras’ colleagues at the Iztacalco General Hospital paying their respects to their fallen friend with a round of applause. A photograph of the doctor now adorns the entrance to the health care facility alongside a banner that reads: “So long, Dr. Pepe Porras. Thank you.”
Friends and colleagues of the doctor, an avid soccer fan and devoted father, also paid tribute to him on social media.
“Thank you for your friendship, for always giving everything for your colleagues and patients,” wrote one person.
“With profound pain and my heart broken, I say goodbye to my friend and excellent colleague, the beloved Dr. Pepe Porras, an excellent doctor with a human quality like few others, a person with values, ethics and professionalism,” said another.
“He was the first … to support me and help me with the most seriously ill patients,” said an emergency room colleague.
“He always worked extra shifts, public holidays, extra hours and he never left until he finished [treating] all his patients. [He was] sensitive, warm, humble, always smiling, always positive, never said ‘I can’t’ or ‘I don’t have time.’”
The robbery of transport trucks has increased 25% during the coronavirus quarantine period and car theft is up 10%, according to a company that specializes in the recovery of stolen vehicles.
The director of LoJack México told the newspaper El Universal that the company had started to see a decline in vehicle theft but numbers shot up again with the commencement of the Covid-19 containment measures.
“About three months ago we started to see very encouraging figures, especially in the central part of the country. … But since the lockdown we’ve had a very marked increase in [the robbery of] heavy vehicles,” David Román said.
He said that thieves are primarily targeting trucks carrying basic goods such as food and other essentials.
“Unfortunately [truck theft] has gone up in virtually the whole country,” Román said, adding that some parts of Mexico have seen sharper increases than others.
“Strangely enough, two municipalities that weren’t reporting such high levels, Zapopan and Guadalajara [both in Jalisco], are starting to have very serious problems. [And] the Mexico City-Puebla corridor continues to be a very significant focal point for these gangs,” he said.
Román said that the highest number of car thefts continue to be in the México state municipalities of Ecatepec and Nezahualcóyotl, both part of the greater Mexico City metropolitan area.
The LoJack chief said that crises always lead to an increase in criminal activity, adding that the National Guard and the army are currently more focused on the response to Covid-19 than public security tasks.
“It reduces the support they provide to other sectors,” he said.
Román warned people to take extra care of their vehicles given that they are more susceptible to theft now than during rosier economic times. He added that LoJack México has an 85% recovery rate of stolen vehicles fitted with the company’s radio transceivers.
Users of internet service provided by Telmex and Telcel experienced network failures in many locations across the country on Tuesday, but the former assured customers that the problem has been fixed.
The firm owned by businessman Carlos Slim said in a press release that the problem was due to a software failure, causing some customers in the cities of Puebla, Veracruz, Villahermosa, Coatzacoalcos, Poza Rica, Irapuato, Aguascalientes and Mexico City to experience service interruptions, although the effects were reported in several other locations.
Telmex added that it “detected the failure thanks to its network management systems, … which allowed it to locate the point of origin and immediately initiate the process to solve it, allowing clients to continue navigating normally.”
For some customers in Oaxaca, service was far from normal for much of the afternoon for both customers of Telmex and the Telcel mobile network.
The internet service troubleshooting website Downdetector reported that the network failures occurred between 2:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m.
The problems caused many users to complain on social media about how the failures were affecting their lives. One of the primary complaints came from students trying to study online.
“I have to do homework on the university platform … [but can’t because of] Telmex with its lousy crap,” said one fed-up student on Twitter.
Telmex asked customers experiencing service interruptions to provide their full names, 10-digit phone number associated with their internet account, a cell phone number and email in order to solve any continuing problems with their service.
Despite the company’s statement that service had been returned to normal, users continued to complain of internet failures and the inability to speak with customer service on Wednesday.
