MEXICO CITY – On New Year’s Day, dozens of people stood in line with empty oxygen tanks in one of Mexico City’s hardest-hit regions to take advantage of a city’s supply of free oxygen fillers for COVID-19 patients.
Jorge Infante took to the queue at 08:00 with three tanks he wanted to fill for sick family members. He only found out about the offer on his third day on Friday via Facebook.
The demand for oxygen through the spread of the virus through the capital of 9 million inhabitants, has caused prices to rise and lines to become expensive. Infante said his family would save about $ 45 a day by getting his three tanks filled for free.
Iztapalapa, the largest city of the capital and one of the hardest hit by the pandemic, is a vast area with low resources.
“The economic conditions are not the first world,” said Carlos Morales, director of health at Iztapalapa. “It means people are suffering from getting tanks.”
Morales said they try to fill about 50 tanks a day.
Elsewhere in the capital, some residents spent New Year’s Eve in queues meandering in a street and around a corner, waiting to refill oxygen containers for family members suffering from COVID-19.
Blanca Nina Méndez Rojas waited in line on Thursday to refill a tank for her brother, who was recently discharged from a public hospital, after contracting COVID-19.
“We just left him disconnected (from oxygen) so he had to stay completely back so he wouldn’t get excited or have a problem until we got back with the tank,” Méndez Rojas said. 70 pesos ($ 3.50), and it is now 150 pesos ($ 7.50). ”
In a city where people are afraid to go to hospitals, and where those who are going to struggle to find a bed, it becomes a matter of life and death.
Juan José Ledesma, a retiree in Mexico City, fell ill with his wife and son. When his test returned positive on December 16, he had to stay home – and go see a private doctor – because the local hospital had no place.
“I used medication prescribed by a private doctor because we went to a health center and there was no place,” Ledesma said. “There was no place because there are too many people coming” for treatment.
Since then, his son – who had recovered – had to go out three or four times a day to refill his father’s oxygen tank.
“The price has gone up two or three times,” Ledesma said. When he thought about the problem, he started crying softly. “I think of rural areas, where things are getting tougher, harder and people have to wait longer, or else they can not afford it.”
Iván, an employee of one oxygen refill shop, who only gave his first name because his bosses did not authorize him to speak to reporters, admitted that sometimes there are so many people waiting, desperate for gas, that they can not refill them all not. their containers completely.
“There are times when we do not have enough oxygen to fill everyone’s tanks,” he said. “Sometimes there are times when we have to reduce refills so that everyone who is in line can at least bring oxygen to their family members.”
To remedy the problems, city officials did little to combat price increases that doubled or tripled the price of refills – but they closed a black market in which industrial-grade oxygen producers sold containers for medical use. Industrial oxygen, which is used to use acetylene flares, is not as pure as the medical gas.
The city government has started a program to give some people oxygen cans or oxygen concentrators, these are machines that take oxygen out of the air and do not need to be refilled. But there is not enough to go around, and buying one of the machines on the private market is excessively expensive for most families.
Before the pandemic, basic machines started at about $ 900, but prices have since risen to $ 1,500 or more.
“The prices for concentrators went through the roof, there was too much profit,” Méndez Rojas said.