MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A 56-year-old Mexican woman suffering from the effects of COVID-19 went into and out of consciousness as paramedics loaded her in and out of an ambulance in a frantic search for a bed. from hospital to overflowing medical centers in Mexico City.
It is an increasingly familiar scene in Mexico City and the neighboring State of Mexico, an urban metropolis inhabited by more than 20 million residents, as expanding cases and deaths of COVID-19 cause hospitals and health workers are on hand.
In Mexico City, 89% of general hospital beds and 84% of ventilated hospital beds are already filled, while the same is true of 82% of general hospital beds and 79% of ventilated beds in the State of Mexico, according to an official data.
Healthcare workers say these figures are misleading and the serious reality is that finding a hospital bed available to those who desperately need it has often seemed like an impossible feat.
“The whole system is completely saturated. There is now no space in public or private hospitals, “said paramedic Daniel Reyes, who was equipped from head to toe with protective equipment, including eyeglasses and a thick face mask.
Reyes was waiting in an ambulance in front of a central hospital in Mexico City after doctors rejected his patient, the 56-year-old woman whose name was withheld for privacy reasons, because there were no intensive care beds. available.
He received oxygen inside the hospital while his nephew, Victor Luqueño, mingled over the phone with the insurer and relatives to try to find another hospital with available beds.
Doctors at the hospital said that “they could not take care of her because if she gets a little worse, she would need intensive care and they are already full in this hospital,” said a worried Luqueño, who has already lost his grandmother to COVID-19 . in December.
Mexico experienced one of its largest daily rises in coronavirus cases on Wednesday, as meetings during the holiday season likely fueled the contagion. For three days this week, more than 1,000 deaths were recorded.
Mexico has reported to date nearly 1.5 million known cases and more than 131,000 deaths, the fourth highest death toll in the world.
Two hours later, Luqueño found his aunt another medical center in the metropolitan area.
Lying on a barrier and wrapped in a plastic bubble-like lung that gave her oxygen, she was loaded back into the ambulance and taken to the hospital, where after some checks by security guards she was admitted. .
He was lucky to have found a bed and so close.
Sometimes, to find a bed for a patient, paramedics have traveled to the state of Queretaro or to Monterrey, in the state of Nuevo Leon, about 900 miles away, Reyes said.
This means that on bad days, an ambulance and its crew can only attend to one patient, limiting the availability of ambulances they desperately need, which before the pandemic could attend to up to eight people daily.
“We’ve been like this for three weeks,” Reyes said.
Reyes said that sometimes, after an unsuccessful day looking for a bed, they have finally had no choice but to take the patient home.
“The problem is finding oxygen,” he said.
Report by Anthony Esposito, edited by Rosalba O’Brien