COVID-19 red alert returns to Mexico City and causes Christmas crisis

The red alert by COVID-19 was re-enacted this Saturday in Mexico City, which is facing its worst moment of the pandemic and a Christmas crisis because non-essential businesses will be closed from now until January 10.

"If this had been done a month ago, two months ago... unfortunately now with the Christmas season, it's a decade ago, because we are all looking for our daily bread or the cheapest things," lamented Beatriz Heredia, a retiree who arrived in the historic centre to buy medicine.

The new emergency measures will cause losses of 48.554 billion pesos (2.427 billion dollars) in sales, warned the National Chamber of Commerce (Canaco).

It could also bankrupt eight out of ten restaurants, according to the National Chamber of the Restaurant and Spicy Food Industry (Canirac).

But the red colour of the epidemiological traffic light (maximum risk level) is on because Mexico City has a hospital saturation rate of almost 85% in its general beds, more than at any other time during the pandemic.

Of the 57 public hospitals to attend COVID-19, 12 are completely full, a figure that rises to 27 when considering those with 90% or more occupancy, according to the Information System of the Severe Acute Respiratory Infection Network (IRAG).

"The government indicated what we had to do, we did not obey, so now we are all paying the consequences, both people who are not in the commercial sphere, and the people who live from it," Heredia said.

The shops in Mexico City's historic centre, filled the day before with Christmas shopping, are now closed, despite the persistent flow of passers-by and street vendors.

"There are a lot of informal vendors here and they are the ones who bring all that stuff, they bring the clothes, the mask, the masks, in other words, many things that are not essential," said Ana Bejarano, a worker in a local food business.

The red light, announced by Mexico City and its neighbouring state of Mexico, only allows the food sector to operate, restaurants with take-away food, energy, telecommunications, medicines, repair shops, and public works and services.

Businesses reacted with solidarity, but questioned the strategy of the capital's government and the federation for resisting the declaration of a health emergency weeks ago, when it was already evident that contagion was on the rise.

However, they also recognised the responsibility of the citizens, who were still crowding the area this morning despite the presence of security elements.

"Here people do not pay attention, the truth, that is the truth, people do not pay attention, they come with complete families, they bring babies, they bring children without masks, without any protection," said Bejarano.

The Government of Mexico has acknowledged that the country is experiencing its second peak of the pandemic, with more than 117,000 deaths and 1.3 million cases, with daily increases exceeding 10,000 infections. Of these figures, Mexico City concentrates more than 282,000 cases and almost 20,000 deaths.

"Today the most important thing is health and life. I know that these are difficult times, but it is urgent to lower the contagion curve. Remember that every one of our actions has an impact on reducing or increasing the number of infections," said Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico City's head of government, on Saturday.

Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who had insisted that there would be no hospital overcrowding in Mexico City, acknowledged the situation in the country's capital today.

"It has been terrible to face this pandemic, but we are getting out, now it was necessary for the doctors to declare Mexico City at a red light because of the number of infections and to prevent the pandemic from overtaking us," he admitted at a public event in the southeastern state of Yucatán.

But López Obrador said that "fortunately this is not what is happening in the whole country," pointing out that only eight of the 32 states have increased the number of infections.

The president, who has questioned the mandatory use of face masks and "authoritarian" measures to curb the pandemic, advocated a "balanced" response between health and the economy. "We have to balance action on health, that is to say, facing the pandemic as we have been doing and also reactivating our economy. We cannot only devote ourselves to attending to the pandemic, to shutting down economic activity completely in the country because that would be very serious," he said.