Puerto Vallarta avoids hospital saturation from COVID-19; transfers patients to Nayarit and Guadalajara

Due to the fact that COVID-19 patients in Puerto Vallarta are transferred out to hospitals in the Metropolitan Area of ​​Guadalajara and Nayarit, the Governor of the state of Jalisco, Enrique Alfaro Ramírez, assured that there is no saturation of hospitals in the municipality of Puerto Vallarta.

Puerto Vallarta’s Mayor, Arturo Dávalos Peña, admits that hospital occupation in the city that he manages isn’t anything he is aware of, arguing that this information was kept by the Ministry of Health. Information that is available to him if there was a desire to request the statistics fro IMSS.

Currently, the port city ranks third in the number of infections in the entity. In the last 24 hours alone, it went from 508 to 537 confirmed cases. In addition, it records 35 deaths.

Puerto Vallarta, also ranks second in infections among health personnel with 79 infected workers in the healthcare system.

The transfers of patients are made mainly from the Regional Hospital of Puerto Vallarta and the General Hospital of Zone 42 of the IMSS, after the increase in demand for hospitalization of those infected with the SARS-Cov-2 virus.

In fact, the Governor of the State of Nayarit, Antonio Echevarría García, reported that 30 new beds were opened at the IMSS Zone 33 General Hospital, located in Bahía de Banderas and used only for patients with COVID-19.

The agency reported that there are 494 people admitted to public and private hospitals with COVID-19. As reported, 326 correspond to people with a positive diagnosis of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and the rest are still considered probable cases pending their result.

The explained that hospital occupation is a dynamic process, since the number of beds occupied in a hospital varies from day to day, depending on discharge.

Further problems in Puerto Vallarta still remain with a lack of testing.

Yesterday, Valeria went to the general hospital of zone 42 of the IMSS because her husband Germán, who is a general doctor of a private hospital, was tested for COVID-19.

“(My husband) woke up with symptoms and that is why they sent him to do the tests. He is a doctor and they did have to see patients with coronavirus,” she said, revealing that the public hospital would not give him a COVID-19 test, so she will take him to a private hospital to receive his test.

“Right now they are very restricted, aren’t they all being tested? Not that I know of,” she said with dismay.

The IMSS hospital is a public hospital managed by the government, and the only health sector where the Federal Government reports COVID-19 cases. By making testing difficult, even for those who have been exposed to the virus, the government is able to report lower cases of infection aimed at helping the fragile economy.

Currently, only 1,014 people have been tested for COVID-19 in Puerto Vallarta since the beginning of the pandemic. Yesterday, only three tests for COVID-19 were administered in the city at IMSS, while doctors who work with COVID-19 patients and show symptoms are being refused testing.