From the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, it was expected that the Puerto Vallarta area of the Jalisco Ministry of Health (SSJ) would be a high contagion zone due to tourism and the large number of migrant population residing between nearby municipalities and other countries, mainly the United States.
This was pointed out by Armando Pérez Oliva, director of the VIII Sanitary Region, when talking about why Puerto Vallarta, until the report on Saturday night, was third in terms of confirmed chaos, only after Guadalajara and Zapopan.
He indicated that Puerto Vallarta is one of the largest cities that exists in Jalisco, only after Guadalajara, Tonalá, Tlaquepaque, in terms of population number, since the inhabitants exceed 500 thousand people.
He added that the region is a tourist area with an important factor predisposing to infections, as millions of people from different parts of the world come to enjoy their vacations year after year.
“We see a great influx of the arrival of international flights; In Port Authority where cruises arrived with a large number of people, so we began to move very strongly with prevention, with the city, and we began to have some cases who had contact with foreign citizens ”.
He recalled that apart from Puerto Vallarta, where until Saturday night there were 60 confirmed cases, the other municipality in the VIII Sanitary Region where there were patients with Covid-19 was Tomatlán, where the Mexican-American migrants were first to present the disease.
He pointed out that Mexican citizens living in the United States at this time can be an important factor of contagion because as they lose their jobs in the U.S., they return to Mexico.
“And that their economic resource is more profitable in Mexico and that will make them begin to arrive and care will not be taken and we will begin to have outbreaks and not just Puerto Vallarta, but at the national or state level.”
Even knowing that Puerto Vallarta could be a hot zone for COVID-19, the government has only tested 366 people for the virus since the beginning of the pandemic.
