[D66] NYT : Mexico and the coronavirus

[R.O.]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/10/world/americas/mexico-coronavirus-hospitals.html?

By Natalie Kitroeff and Paulina Villegas

     Aug. 10, 2020
     Updated 9:02 a.m. ET

MEXICO CITY — A gray Suzuki stopped outside the General Hospital of 
Mexico and deposited a heaving Victor Bailón at the entrance. He had 
refused to come to the hospital for days, convinced that doctors were 
killing coronavirus patients. By the time he hobbled into the triage 
area and collapsed on the floor, it was too late.

“Papito, breathe!” his wife screamed. “Please breathe.”

Within an hour, Mr. Bailón was dead.

Mexico is battling one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the world, 
with more than 52,000 confirmed deaths, the third-highest toll of the 
pandemic. And its struggle has been made even harder by a pervasive 
phenomenon: a deeply rooted fear of hospitals.

The problem has long plagued nations overwhelmed by unfamiliar diseases. 
During the Ebola epidemic in 2014, many in Sierra Leone believed that 
hospitals had become hopeless death traps, leading sick people to stay 
home and inadvertently spread the disease to their families and neighbors.

Here in Mexico, a similar vicious cycle is taking place. As the pandemic 
crushes an already weak health care system, with bodies piling up in 
refrigerated trucks, many Mexicans see the Covid ward as a place where 
only death awaits — to be avoided at all cost.

The consequences, doctors, nurses and health ministers say, are severe. 
Mexicans are waiting to seek medical care until their cases are so bad 
that doctors can do little to help them. Thousands are dying before ever 
seeing the inside of a hospital, government data show, succumbing to the 
virus in taxis on the way there or in sickbeds at home.

Fighting infections at home may not only spread the disease more widely, 
epidemiologists say, but it also hides the true toll of the epidemic 
because an untold number of people die without ever being tested — and 
officially counted — as coronavirus victims.

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