The New Threat to Mexico's Failing Hospitals

there is another surge in coronavirus cases. His remarks came in an interview today with CNBC. We can't shut down the economy again. I think we've learned that if you shut down the economy, you're going to create more damage, and not just economic damage. But there are there are other areas, and we've talked about this of medical problems and everything else that get put on hold. Minuction said we could avoid another shutdown because COVID nineteen testing and

contact tracing are improving. He also said officials understand more about how to contain outbreaks, but contact tracing efforts aren't turning out to be a perfect solution, even in countries that are investing in them. In the first week of contact tracing in England, tracers didn't get in touch with the third of new cases referred to them. The country's Department of Health and Social Care said in a statement that the teams identified nearly thirty two thousand contacts in

the first week. Around twenty seven thousand were advised to self isolate. Finally, Moderna's vaccine trial is moving fast. The company said it had selected a dose for a final stage clinical trial of its coronavirus vaccine that should begin in July. The final study, which will include thirty thousand people, will be conducted in collaboration with a National Institute of

Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the US. It's primary goal will be to show that the vaccine prevents people from developing symptoms of COVID nineteen and now our main story. The coronavirus is hitting Latin America in ways unseen in the developed world. One place that's seen a devastating surgeon cases is Mexico. But what makes Mexico's outbreak worse is that it's savaging a health care system that was already inadequate. Doctors and nurses in Mexico say they lacked the most

basic of protective gear like masks and gloves. Hospitals are at capacity. In Mexico City, more than twenty thousand doctors, nurses, and hospital staff have caught the virus. It's another grim reminder that the illness is spiraling out of control. I spoke with Naha Katan, a Bloomberg reporter in Mexico City who has watched the crisis unfold. She talked about what happens when a crisis hits a system that was unprepared and underfunded in the best of times. What is the

situation in Mexico right now with COVID nineteen. So as of last week, we saw a lot of record new cases, new new death toll records, including deaths rising above one thousand in one day. The government says it didn't all happen in one day, and that there's a lag, but the fact is that the cases were coming in, you know, at a at a faster pace, and the government itself said we're now at at this peak, you know, pandemic. We're at this crisis time and at the same time,

hospital specifically in Mexico City. We're at capacity. So I think a big question is if we haven't seen that full wave actually come in and be hospitalized yet, because we just saw the initial numbers and we don't know where they are on the timeline. What do you do when you have instead of eighty percent capacity? What happens if that capacity goes up and we lose space in the hospital system. And that kind of brings me to

the Mexico City public hospital system. They've they've been they've been so bad for so long that even compared to Latin America, Mexico has one of the worst public health care systems. It spends the least on health as a percentage of GDP than every other Latin American country except for Peru and Venezuela. That was data I found from the World Bank. And we don't even know when this is over, and we're already at capacity in Mexico City, So there's just a lot of red flags going up here.

Has there been any attempt physically with regard to hospitals and this capacity issue. Has there been any any discussion, any proposal little to try and address some of these very significant capacity concerns within the hospitals, Oh absolutely, I mean the government has has built hospitals. Well, there's one in Mexico City that is kind of a makeshift, you know,

health facility that that was built very quickly. Mexico has highed thousands of healthcare workers according to official numbers, and they've made a huge push from the US to China to get ventilators brought here as quickly as possible, because we only had about five thousand in the whole country. I know there's a push being made to improve the situation. It's just a question of whether it's too little, too late, of whether the cases will overwhelm this attempt to to

improve things. And the one sign we have is just that Mexico's healthcare workers infected by COVID did double in two weeks from you know, eleven thousands to twenty to a little over twenty thou and deaths have reached close to what we've seen in the US, which is where there have been many, many more cases than in Mexico. So that doesn't bode well for you know, Mexico's attempts to really to really overhaul the system as quickly as

it's trying to do. I mean, I think the attempts are are good and an important, but it's not clear how much they can do in such a short time. What's the status of Mexico in terms of social distancing policies or lockdown enforcement. I mean officially, Mexico started reopening actually mid May in certain parts of the country. At

the start of June, it's reopening further. Basically, they're they're making sectors like the automobile sector and construction considered essential activity, so people who work in those sectors can leave their homes and go to their places of work if the companies have the security protocol set up. And what we've seen since then is that there has been a spike across Mexico in activity, even though unlike other countries, this beginning of a reopening is happening before Mexico actually reaches

its peak. Uh. And that's caused a lot of questions among um some health experts in the fields. Mexico City was at the heart of the H one and one outbreak UM several years ago, and I'm just wondering has that informed Mexico's response to COVID nineteen at all. It has, you know, they're they're using this Sentinnel model, which is a way of projecting how many cases there really are

without doing testing among the entire population. So there's limited testing and the government is saying, you know, this is what worked for us in the past, but again critics say, we need to test much more broadly. We don't really know what's happening. You know. There are the news reports and others coming out with figures death tolls that might might be much higher and cases that are that are definitely higher. It's actually raised a lot of questions about

the data in Mexico. In general, Mexico is looking pretty grim, but the entire Latin American region is now considered the epicenter. The World Health Organization last week said that Brazil, Mexico and other countries here account for more than one million cases. They don't really see a peak, no stabilization really coming at this point, you know. And that's happening at the same time as a lot of statements out of the

government suggests that things are much better. So you kind of get, on one hand information from the government that makes it that makes you think that maybe things are finally coming under control, maybe even as soon as as early as this week, but there's so much data from weeks past, and so much so many kind of record breaking death tolls, daily death tolls that have happened recently, that it's just not clear where Mexico is on the

you know, in the pandemic curve. And like other countries in the region in Latin America, Mexico faces poor health care systems and very few social safety nets because well, Mexico was slow to lockdown. They waited until the end of March, and the enforcement has been pretty lax in the lockdown because companies are just strongly urged to close that there's no there's a force shutdown, which is what

the president has said. He's he's persuading companies, he's not forcing them to shut and people are returning to the streets. They have no money to eat, and there is very little money being spent on the economic recovery. The government has said it doesn't want to go further into debt, so it's not really doling out the kind of unemployment insurance or um you know, aid packages to the poor

that you might be seeing another in other countries. And and this does raise a good question that I think you've been touching on but maybe if we could maybe unpack even more. You know, obviously there's been extreme economic fallout from COVID nineteen globally, but with specific reference to Mexico,

what has been the economic fallout from COVID nineteen. The official jobs lost something around five is just kind of a sliver of of what's really happening because there's whole informal sector and very complex ways of measuring unemployment here. But there was one study also from a public agency about twelve million people either losing their jobs or not working because they're on furlough or just not working at that moment as of April. And that's that's a very

big number. And one of the deputy governors of the Central Bank wrote along article where he argues that Mexico's labor crisis is far worse than the labor crisis in the US. Some people within the president's own party saying we need to go into further debt so that we can pay for the recovery and help the poor. And again that's not something that's that's shifting very very extensively, that the government is sticking to its message that it

will do things through austerity. Through budget cuts and not through overspending and you know, bailouts to companies for example. Has there been any broader requests or asks of the government in terms of what steps they need to be taking in terms of maybe flattening that curve. The one constant is testing, testing, testing. There needs to be more testing. That's the suggestion coming from all sides. And it's it's the one area where Mexico is not it's not really boosting,

it's testing numbers. That was Nahakatan and that's our show today. You can find naha story on the situation in Mexico City and how it has affected her own family on Bloomberg dot com. And for coverage of the outbreak from one and twenty bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com slash Corona of Virus and if you like the show, please leave us a review and a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to help more

listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Topher foreheads Jordan Gospore, Magnus Hendrickson and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported by Naha Katan. Original music by Leo Citrin. Our editors are Francesca Levi and Rick Shine. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.