Mexico City hospitals still at saturation point

The pandemic has played out in peaks and valleys in Mexico over the past year and half. The country is now in the middle of its third wave of infections, a surge that began in mid-June and is just beginning to show signs of easing. Ajusco Medio hospital sits in a hillside neighbourhood on Mexico City's south side. Designated early on to handle only COVID-19 patients, the public hospital has treated more than 62,000 patients.

On Tuesday, its intensive care unit was at 99% capacity. The 96-bed temporary care wing built in the hospital's parking deck below the main tower was at 99.6% capacity, with one open bed. That temporary care wing, the staff call it the UTAM, was not supposed to house intubated patients, just those receiving high-volume oxygen, but on Tuesday, intubated patients abounded.

"This was made for high-flow points only, for stable patients, for patients who don't get their saturation (oxygen) low enough to be intubated," hospital director Dr. Jesús Ortiz said during a walk through the UTAM.

Most of the patients now filling Ajusco Medio's beds arrived in a wave two weeks ago or more. "It appears we are in the decline of the pandemic curve," Ortiz said. Still, patients were trickling in from other parts of the sprawling city and even other states drawn by the hospital's hard-earned reputation as a place where COVID-19 patients got better. Mexico has suffered more than 258,000 test-confirmed deaths. But because so little testing is done, official excess-death counts suggest the real toll is closer to 400,000.

A difference with this latest wave of infections is that hospitals like Ajusco Medio are seeing more children than they have in the previous waves. The staff had grown accustomed to seeing long lines of adults waiting beside their outdoor triage area, but suddenly there were adults holding children by the hand.

"Now we can see 50, 60 children coming to the hospital to be evaluated per shift," Ortiz said, noting that those cases were harder on the staff. With Mexico's return to in-person classes this week, there is concern that those numbers could swell in the coming weeks. Fernández said their pediatric load was three times what it had been.