Nearly a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, Mexico is entering its darkest phase yet.
More people are infected than at any point before, including the nation's president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Hospitals in many nations are near capacity, ventilators and oxygen tanks are in scarce supply and each day seems to bring a replacement record price.
At a short-lived center assembled on a Mexico City military base, the morgue has run out of space.
"In the top, you’re just stacking people in piles," said Dr. Giorgio Alberto Franyuti Kelly, chief of biosecurity for the military, who treats patients at the makeshift hospital.
Large-scale vaccination is widely seen because of the clearest answer. Yet this last week the govt announced that its inoculation program — one among the foremost ambitious in Latin America — had essentially come to a standstill.
The country of 128 million people has received just 766,350 doses of vaccine, all produced by Pfizer-BioNTech.
That figure was alleged to hit 1.5 million by the top of the month, but Pfizer now says it can't meet that goal because it's remodeling one among its factories in Europe to eventually boost production.
Mexican officials have described the delay as a minor setback and said shipments from Pfizer are expected to resume on Feb. 15.
"It is just getting to be temporarily postponed," said Mexico's undersecretary of health, Dr. Hugo López-Gatell, who is leading the nation's pandemic response.
But health experts warned that the pause in vaccinations could have serious consequences because roughly half 1,000,000 medical workers who have received an initial dose are going to be forced to attend longer than is perfect for the critical second dose.
Pfizer says its shots should tend three weeks apart.
López-Gatell said there's no cause for panic, pointing to studies that show that the vaccine should be quite effective if the second dose is run within four weeks.
After failing to acknowledge the threat of the coronavirus early within the pandemic and conduct the widespread testing needed to fight it, the Mexican government earned praise for its vaccination strategy.
Early on, Mexico made agreements with several companies performing on vaccines, and it had been the primary nation in Latin America to start vaccination, on Dec. 24.
Officials here said they need already made deals to get enough vaccine to inoculate the whole country.
They have signed agreements with Pfizer, China's CanSino Biologics, and therefore the British company AstraZeneca to get enough vaccine for 128 million people. they're also trying to line up enough of the Sputnik V vaccine from Russia for 12 million more.
Buying from an array of companies helps diversify risk and protect Mexico from unforeseen events like this month's postponement of deliveries from Pfizer, say officials within the Foreign Ministry, which helped negotiate the deals. Still, there's no official delivery date for vaccines from most of the businesses.
The Pfizer delay couldn't have come at a worse time.
Mexico has officially recorded nearly 150,000 official COVID-19 deaths — the fourth-highest price within the world — although officials acknowledge that the true count is far higher. Last year the country tallied 274,486 more deaths of all kinds than during a normal year, and health experts said the overwhelming majority are probably due to the pandemic.
Epidemiologists blame the present surgeon for the Christmas holiday when many families gathered in large groups despite pleas from health authorities.
They said deaths occurring over the last week are probably the results of gatherings on Dec. 24. Another, larger wave of deaths is predicted within the next five weeks, a consequence of celebrations to mark New Year's Day and Three Kings Day, on Jan. 6.
"It's an enormous snowball," Dr. Laurie Ann Ximénez-Fyvie, who runs the microbiology laboratory at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, told the Reforma newspaper. "What's happening immediately may be a perfect storm, the results of three holidays each every week apart."
For doctors in COVID-19 wards, work has become a nightmare which becomes more frightening a day.
"Death by COVID-19 is getting more grotesque," said Franyuti, the military doctor.
During several long shifts in recent weeks, he has been one among only a couple of doctors caring for quite 100 critically ill coronavirus patients. Without enough ventilators, he sometimes watches patients gasp for breath until they die.
That's what happened last week with a 35-year-old named Pedro.
"I had to let him die in agony because I had no place to transfer him," Franyuti said. "I could only hold his hand."
He expressed anger that Mexico City waited until late December to enter into a second lockdown, despite data that showed cases were rising and said he's upset that the town has allowed restaurants to resume outdoor dining.
"You need to establish measures that limit people's ability to place themselves in danger," he said.
The vaccine distributed thus far appears to possess gone almost exclusively to front-line healthcare workers. Franti, who recently received his second dose, said he was encouraged that distribution guidelines were being followed — a notable achievement during a country often hampered by corruption.
López Obrador announced that he had tested positive for COVID-19 and was experiencing mild symptoms Sunday. The president seldom wears a mask publicly, including during his daily news conferences, which are sometimes attended by dozens of fellow officials and journalists.
López Obrador, a center-left populist who has maintained high approval ratings since taking office in 2018, has been criticized by some for his pandemic response, including his refusal to take a position in widespread testing. But he has been willing to spend money when it involves building a strong vaccination plan.
At first, the president insisted that each vaccination effort be administered exclusively by the military, which he has turned to again and again in recent years to handle an array of civilian matters, from infrastructure projects to immigration enforcement.
But last week, after news of the Pfizer delay and intense pressure from state politicians, he permitted the nation's governors to accumulate vaccines on their own as long as they only buy vaccines that are approved to be used in Mexico.
Local leaders welcomed the choice, although some criticized the president for waiting a month and a half to offer them authorization, saying global competition for vaccines will mean delays of quite a year.
"The world's supply of vaccines has been spoken for," said Miguel Riquelme, the governor of Coahuila state, which borders Texas.
The prospect of long wait times has spurred concerns in a few black markets.
The Federal Commission for cover against Health Risks — Mexico's version of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — warned last week about the illegal sale of vaccines on the web, in pharmacies, and in hospitals.
In particular, it called attention to the unauthorized sale of a vaccine made by Moderna, which has not been approved to be used in Mexico. Officials are presumably concerned about the Moderna vaccine being smuggled across the border from us, where it's produced.
There has also been increasing talk about "vaccine tourism," during which those with means visit countries where the vaccine is more widely available. Private doctors, who weren't a neighborhood of the initial vaccination plan, have spoken of getting to the U.S. to urge vaccinated.
Last week, Florida Surgeon Gen. Scott Rivkees issued an advisory requiring those distributing vaccines within the state to verify that the patient is a minimum of a part-time Florida resident. The move comes after several news reports suggested that wealthy people from other countries, including Mexico, were traveling there to urge vaccination.
MORE| COVID-19 variants from Brazil and South Africa are less susceptible to antibodies, finds study
MORE| Stranded container ship partially refloated but still blocking Suez Canal
0 Comments