Hugo Lopez-Gatell, Undersecretary for Prevention and Health Promotion, reported that the Covid-19 health emergency in Mexico has come to an end; This is because the country meets the same characteristics and criteria that the World Health Organization took to do so.
Due to this, López-Gatell pointed out that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador signed a decree to put an end to it established on March 23, 2020, in which the situation of health emergency in the Mexican Republic and due to this, the agreements issued by the General Health Council and the Secretary of Health are considered suspended.
During the morning press conference, the undersecretary pointed out that, despite the fact that the WHO has terminated the pandemic, the SARS-CoV-2 virus will remain – perhaps – perpetually in the human species.
Among the reasons that the WHO took to raise the public health emergency of international concern, and that the Mexican authorities followed, were: the recognition that there is a continuous downward trend in the different consequences of the epidemic, cases, hospitalizations and deaths associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection; that populations have reached high levels of immunity, either by infection or by vaccination; that the current variants of Covid-19 are less virulent, so they have less capacity to cause serious damage.
And that the clinical management of sick people already has a better capacity, not only due to the existence of medication, but also due to changes in treatment practice.
“These characteristics are also fulfilled in the Mexican territory; in fact, they had been fulfilled for several months, as we had been indicating,” said Hugo López-Gatell.
Furthermore, he stated that the epidemic curve in Mexico there has been a change -since the entry of the Omicron variant into the country- consistent with what has happened in other parts of the world and means that, although there is a significant number of cases in the epidemic waves, they are not accompanied by a significant proportion of hospitalized or deceased.
long term management
In a list of seven elements, the Undersecretary for Prevention and Health Promotion commented that there is a long-term management plan for Covid-19 made up of seven points.
These recommendations made by the authorities are: general recommendations (use of face masks, work disabilities, etc.); service exchange and continuity; surveillance, monitoring and warning; recognition of conversion processes; vaccination plan in the Universal Vaccination Program; clinical management and consequences, and update of response plans.
