TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) – The number of deaths from the coronavirus in Mexico’s best-known border city, Tijuana, has soared and the COVID-19 mortality rate is twice the national average, the health ministry says, after medical staff quickly fell ill as the outbreak rampaged through hospital wards.
A man reacts as he stands behind a protective panel while the body of his father, who died from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), is taken away, at General Regional Hospital No.1 of the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), in Tijuana, May 6, 2020. REUTERS/Ariana Drehsler
A floor at one of the city’s main public hospitals has been left empty because so many workers are sick there are not enough left to care for patients, the hospital director said, despite people with COVID-19 symptoms lining up outside to get in for treatment.
More than 21% of patients who have tested positive for coronavirus in the city do not survive, health ministry data showed as of Thursday. In the rest of Mexico, the figure was just under 10%
While Tijuana’s figure might be due partly to an unduly high proportion of very sick patients being tested for coronavirus, Alberto Reyes Escamilla, director of Tijuana General Hospital, said he thought it was directly linked to the hospital’s personnel shortage.
“It has a lot to do with the fact that we don’t have staff,” he said, adding that about 500 of his 1,200 person pre-pandemic staff are either off sick or furloughed because of vulnerability to the illness.
“We have a floor that could hold 30 more patients, but we can’t use it because I don’t have the personnel,” said Reyes, who heads one of three public hospitals treating coronavirus.
The two other public hospitals in Tijuana that are treating coronavirus p