The COVID-19 pandemic has been on the rise for 12 consecutive weeks; however, vaccination has contributed to making the disease less serious, said the undersecretary for Prevention and Health Promotion, Hugo López-Gatell Ramírez.
In the morning press conference led by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and before the Secretary of Health, Jorge Alcocer Varela, Undersecretary López-Gatell stressed that due to the protection provided by vaccines, the increase in hospitalizations and deaths is slight .
The hospital occupancy of general beds is eight percent and three percent in intensive therapy; deaths “are practically minimal” compared to previous waves, he detailed.
He reported that the Patria vaccine is in phase III, which corresponds to the clinical trial. It has been slower because there are few cases of the disease in this wave. Added to this situation is the success of having vaccinated 87 percent of the Mexican population.
In this context, he explained, it was decided that Patria, whose presentation is injectable and nasal, is a booster vaccine, and it is expected that the study sample will be completed in the following weeks to move on to the analytical phase of the results and with it The Federal Commission for the Protection against Sanitary Risks (Cofepris) will define whether its registration for emergency use is authorized.
Undersecretary López-Gatell Ramírez explained that Patria is a project promoted by the National Council of Science and Technology (Conacyt), as a sign of the ability to develop health protection products recovering sovereignty, and is one of the most stable biological developed in the world with all phases of production.
Regarding the new Regulation of the General Law for Tobacco Control, the President of the Republic, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said that even when those who distribute and sell cigarettes do not agree with the provisions, measures must be taken to protect life of people. Likewise, he stressed that international organizations make calls because they have million-dollar contracts, but first is the health of the people above any contract.
The general director of the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), Zoé Robledo Aburto, pointed out that at the end of 2022 the IMSS-Wellness Health Plan reached 21.8 million people in the nine incorporated states, reaching 33.3 percent of the goal of 65.6 million; by 2023 the objective is to cover Baja California, Mexico City, Chiapas, Hidalgo, Michoacán, Morelos, Oaxaca, San Luis Potosí, Tabasco, Tamaulipas, Quintana Roo and Zacatecas.
He stressed that they are in talks with the state leaders of Puebla and Aguascalientes; Regarding Coahuila and the State of Mexico, which are in the electoral process, they will wait for the change of administration to propose federalization. The entities that chose not to join are: Durango, Yucatán, Chihuahua, Jalisco, Nuevo León, Guanajuato and Querétaro, to whom their shares will be transferred by law.
The general director of the IMSS reported that on January 27, 124 specialists will arrive from Cuba. This concludes the first stage of the program that adds 610 professionals: 123 internal medicine, 81 pediatrics, 64 general surgery, 48 family medicine, 30 ophthalmology, 23 nephrology, 22 intensive medicine and 219 other specialties.
Regarding the call that began on January 3 and ends today at 12:00 at night, the head of the IMSS pointed out that 18,483 applications have been received for general medicine and nursing personnel, who will work in Nayarit, Tlaxcala, Baja Southern California, Sonora and Campeche, in the shifts that the first level units and some hospitals did not cover.
On the other hand, he indicated that regarding the process that was launched in December with the Institute of Health for Well-being (Insabi) for the purchase of medical equipment in 10 states, two thousand 92 million pesos were used to acquire 34 thousand 883 pieces of equipment, such as hospital clinical beds, red cars and vital signs monitors, which were sent to Baja California Sur, Campeche, Guerrero, Michoacán, Morelos, Oaxaca, San Luis Potosí, Sinaloa, Veracruz and Zacatecas.
