By Anthony Esposito
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – The 56-year-old Mexican woman suffering from the effects of COVID-19 lost consciousness as paramedics placed her and exited an ambulance in a frantic search for a hospital bed in Mexico City’s overcrowded medical centers .
It is an increasingly familiar scene in Mexico City and the neighboring State of Mexico, an urban metropolis that is home to more than 20 million residents, as the rise in COVID-19 cases and deaths brings hospitals and health professionals to the limit.
In Mexico City, 89% of beds in general hospitals and 84% of beds in general hospitals are occupied, while 82% of beds in general hospitals and 79% of beds with ventilators in the State of Mexico, according to the official Dice.
Health professionals say these numbers are misleading, and the sad reality is that finding a hospital bed available to those in desperate need seems like an impossible feat.
“The whole system is completely saturated. There are no rooms in public or private hospitals now,” said paramedic Daniel Reyes, dressed from head to toe in protective gear, including goggles and a thick face mask.
Reyes was waiting in an ambulance outside a hospital in downtown 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.
She received oxygen inside the hospital while her nephew, Victor Luqueño, spoke on the phone with the insurance company and relatives to try to find another hospital with available beds.
Hospital doctors said “they couldn’t take care of her because if she got worse, she would need intensive care and they are already overbooked in this hospital,” said a concerned Luqueño, who already lost his grandmother to COVID-19 in December.
Mexico had one of its biggest daily increases in coronavirus cases on Wednesday, as meetings during the holiday season likely fueled the contagion. During three days of this week, there were more than 1,000 registered deaths.
Mexico has so far reported almost 1.5 million known cases and more than 131,000 deaths, the fourth highest number of deaths in the world.
After two hours, Luqueño found another medical center in the metropolitan area for his aunt.
Stretched out on a stretcher and wrapped in a plastic bubble-shaped lung that gives her oxygen, she was placed back in the ambulance and taken to the hospital, where after some checks by security guards, she was admitted.
She was lucky to have found a bed, and so close.
Sometimes, to find a bed for a patient, paramedics travel to the state of Queretaro or to Monterrey, in the state of Nuevo Leon, about 900 kilometers (560 miles) away, said Reyes.
This means that, on bad days, an ambulance and its staff can assist only one patient, limiting the availability of severely needed ambulances, which before the pandemic could serve up to eight people a day.
“We’ve been like this for three weeks,” said Reyes.
Reyes said that sometimes, after a fruitless day looking for a bed, they ended up having no choice but to take the patient home.
“The problem is finding oxygen,” he said.
(Reporting by Anthony Esposito, edited by Rosalba O’Brien)