The numbers of individuals infected with COVID-19 may be higher than Mexico country is admitting, according to several major media outlets in the United States, including The New York Times and Washington Post.
On April 28, Bloomberg announced that the hospitals in Mexico City have reached capacity and were turning away patients because they had no space.
Bloomberg reports that as of April 28, Mexico City had 4,152 confirmed cases of coronavirus, which was a quarter of the entire country’s totals. But, Bloomberg says, that staggering statistic is only part of the story because it doesn’t say how many patients have needed hospitalization for their care – up to one-third of the city’s patients, according to data from Mexico’s Health Ministry.
A dozen of the country’s hospitals were completely without beds for new patients. Ten more have limited capacity. That’s 22 of 56 hospitals in the capital city that are operating with massively reduced bed space for patients with COVID-19 or any other medical condition.
In May, the Times reported even more dire conditions.
The newspaper wrote that hundreds, maybe even thousands of deaths due to COVID-19 had gone unreported in Mexico, with the tally of deaths more than three times higher than the country’s “official numbers” according to officials and confidential data.
Doctors in Mexico City say that true extent of the coronavirus crisis is being concealed, especially when elderly patients are in metal chairs because of a lack of beds, patients are being turned away too because of a lack of space.
“It’s like we doctors are living in two different worlds,” said Dr. Giovanna Avila, in an interview with the Times. Avila works at Hospital de Especialidades Belisario Domínguez. “One is inside of the hospital with patients dying all the time. And the other is when we walk out onto the streets and see people walking around, clueless of what is going on and how bad the situation really is.”
But some officials say bed space isn’t the problem, according to Bloomberg.com.
“There aren’t enough,” said Francisco Moreno, head of internal medicine at ABC Medical Center. “Half or more of all patients are requiring ventilators and we’ve run out.”
And, according to The Wall Street Journal, the death tolls are inaccurate, because many of the patients aren’t being tested for the virus, even if they die
Officials in Mexico City have tracked more than 2,500 deaths attributed to the virus and other respiratory illnesses that could have been related to COVID-19, but the government reports only 700 deaths in Mexico City and the communities surrounding it.
According to the New York Times, fewer than 1 in 1,000 people are tested, but the government says Mexico is doing better than many of the largest countries in the world. Although health ministry official Hugo Lopez-Gatell says they have flattened the curve, they will not respond to questions about deaths in Mexico City. Also, former health ministers are speaking out against the counts, accusing Lopez-Gatell of lying.
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