On Tuesday, Undersecretary of Prevention and Health Promotion Hugo Lopez-Gatell called on Mexicans to go to health centers to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
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"Ninety-seven percent of the people who are hospitalized have not been vaccinated. The remaining 3 percent are people who have a disease that causes significant immunosuppression, which possibly contributed to the vaccine not being fully effective," he said.
Besides pointing out that Mexico is going through a new wave of contagions, the epidemiologist recalled that vaccination has decreased the lethality in people over 60 years of age by 30 percentage points.
"It is extremely important to get vaccinated. Vaccination reduces the impact of COVID-19, mortality, and hospitalization," Lopez-Gatell emphasized.
Currently, the occupancy rate for general beds is 48 percent and 39 percent for intensive care beds. Several sub-national governments, however, are on red alert for high hospitalization. This happens, for example, in Mexico City where 76 percent of hospital beds are already occupied.
Since December, health authorities have applied 67.6 million doses and 25.8 million people have received two doses. This means that 20.5 percent of 126 million inhabitants already have some protection against COVID-19.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) also called on the population to get vaccinated, emphasizing that the vaccine has been proven to save lives.
"We now have a new wave of infections but fortunately there are no deaths in the same proportion as before," he said.
Mexico has a specific vaccination plan for 45 municipalities in six states bordering the United States. So far, the governments of these territories have managed to vaccinate 2.6 million young people between 18 and 39 years of age and 85.7 percent of the target population.