The mayor of Mexico City is resisting calls for a COVID-19-related lockdown in the city as hospitals are filled to 75 percent occupancy this week.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum has avoided directing a coronavirus shutdown, instead encouraging residents to stay inside as the city has set a record for hospital bed occupancy every day this week, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday.
Hospitalizations have risen above its spring levels. Before this week, a record of 4,553 hospitalizations occurred on May 22, which was broken again on Dec. 12. The city reported 4,834 hospital beds in use on Tuesday.
A shutdown would automatically occur if Sheinbaum moved the city to a red zone from an orange zone. But the zones are determined partly by the percentage of hospital beds occupied, prompting the city to add 260 more beds to delay a lockdown, Bloomberg News reported.
The mayor also announced that the city is conducting 20,000 rapid tests every day in the hopes of identifying cases quicker.
“Her message is confusing — Is it orange? Is it red? You can go outside but it’s better to stay home — this is leading people to make bad decisions,” former health minister Salomon Chertorivski said in a radio interview, according to Bloomberg News.
Some experts suspect Sheinbaum is appeasing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has previously argued to keep the economy running amid the pandemic.
“We’re doing all we can to avoid returning to the painful situation of shutting down,” Sheinbaum said Tuesday.
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Mexico City mayor resists call for lockdown as hospitals hit 75 percent occupancy https://t.co/aedzoUmuUv pic.twitter.com/Vr9vt7Qsyn
— The Hill (@thehill) December 17, 2020
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