By Anthony Esposito
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – The 56-year-old Mexican woman who suffered the effects of COVID-19 slipped into and out of her consciousness when paramedics loaded her up and down an ambulance in a furious search for ‘ a hospital bed in the crowded medical centers of Mexico City.
It’s an increasingly famous scene in Mexico City and the neighboring state of Mexico, an urban metropolis where more than 20 million residents live, as the increasing incidence of COVID-19 and deaths pushes hospitals and health workers to the brink.
According to the official, 89% of the general hospital beds and 84% of the beds were filled with fans, while the same was true for 82% of the general hospital beds and 79% of the beds with fans. data.
Healthcare professionals believe that the numbers are misleading, and the grim reality is that the search for an available hospital bed for the needy has often seemed like an impossible thing.
“The whole system is completely saturated. There is now no space in public or private hospitals,” said paramedic Daniel Reyes, equipped from head to toe with protective equipment, including glasses and a thick face mask.
Reyes was waiting in an ambulance outside a Mexican city hospital after doctors rejected his patient, the 56-year-old woman whose name was withheld for privacy reasons, because no intensive care beds were available.
She was getting oxygen in the hospital while her nephew, Victor Luqueño, scrambled with the insurer and family members over the phone to try to find another hospital with available beds.
Doctors in the hospital said ‘they can not take care of her, because if she gets a little worse, she will need intensive care and they are already satiated in the hospital’, said a worried Luqueño, who his grandmother already lost to COVID-19. in December.
Mexico saw one of its biggest daily increases in coronavirus cases on Wednesday, as meetings during the holiday season likely sparked contagion. There were more than 1,000 deaths for three days this week.
Mexico has so far reported nearly 1.5 million known cases and more than 131,000 deaths, the fourth highest death toll worldwide.
After two hours, Luqueño finds his aunt at another medical center in the metropolitan area.
Stretched out on a gurney and wrapped in a plastic bubble-like lung that gives her oxygen, she was again loaded into the ambulance and taken to the hospital, where she was admitted after a few examinations by the security guards.
She was happy she got a bed, and so close.
Sometimes, to find a bed for a patient, paramedics traveled to the state of Queretaro or to Monterrey in the state of Nuevo Leon, about 900 kilometers away, Reyes said.
This means that on bad days, an ambulance and its crew can only care for one patient, which limits the availability of much-needed ambulances, which can provide up to eight people daily before the pandemic.
“We’ve been like this for three weeks now,” Reyes said.
Reyes said that after a fruitless day of searching for a bed, they finally had no choice but to take the patient home.
“The problem there is finding oxygen,” he said.
(Reporting by Anthony Esposito, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)