WEBVTT - The New Threat to Mexico's Failing Hospitals 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:09.920 Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day since coronavirus 0:00:09.960 --> 0:00:15.120 was declared a global pandemic. Our main story in Mexico. 0:00:15.640 --> 0:00:19.880 COVID nineteen is raging out of control, but the country's 0:00:19.920 --> 0:00:24.840 health system has been failing its citizens for decades. Today 0:00:25.239 --> 0:00:28.639 a dispatch from the country's capital where patients fear the 0:00:28.720 --> 0:00:34.320 hospital almost as much as the disease. But first, here's 0:00:34.320 --> 0:00:46.120 what happened today. Treasury Secretary Stephen Nuchin rejected the idea 0:00:46.200 --> 0:00:49.839 of rolling back the reopening of the economy even if 0:00:49.880 --> 0:00:54.200 there is another surge in coronavirus cases. His remarks came 0:00:54.280 --> 0:00:58.639 in an interview today with CNBC. We can't shut down 0:00:58.680 --> 0:01:01.280 the economy again. I think we've learned that if you 0:01:01.360 --> 0:01:05.480 shut down the economy, you're going to create more damage, 0:01:05.640 --> 0:01:08.640 and not just economic damage. But there are there are 0:01:08.720 --> 0:01:13.080 other areas, and we've talked about this of medical problems 0:01:13.080 --> 0:01:16.679 and everything else that get put on hold. Minuction said 0:01:16.720 --> 0:01:20.640 we could avoid another shutdown because COVID nineteen testing and 0:01:20.720 --> 0:01:26.160 contact tracing are improving. He also said officials understand more 0:01:26.360 --> 0:01:31.959 about how to contain outbreaks, but contact tracing efforts aren't 0:01:31.959 --> 0:01:35.080 turning out to be a perfect solution, even in countries 0:01:35.200 --> 0:01:38.200 that are investing in them. In the first week of 0:01:38.240 --> 0:01:41.880 contact tracing in England, tracers didn't get in touch with 0:01:41.920 --> 0:01:46.319 the third of new cases referred to them. The country's 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:49.480 Department of Health and Social Care said in a statement 0:01:49.760 --> 0:01:54.080 that the teams identified nearly thirty two thousand contacts in 0:01:54.120 --> 0:01:58.920 the first week. Around twenty seven thousand were advised to 0:01:59.000 --> 0:02:05.840 self isolate. Finally, Moderna's vaccine trial is moving fast. The 0:02:05.920 --> 0:02:08.640 company said it had selected a dose for a final 0:02:08.760 --> 0:02:12.960 stage clinical trial of its coronavirus vaccine that should begin 0:02:13.080 --> 0:02:17.880 in July. The final study, which will include thirty thousand people, 0:02:18.200 --> 0:02:21.720 will be conducted in collaboration with a National Institute of 0:02:21.800 --> 0:02:26.359 Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the US. It's primary goal 0:02:26.600 --> 0:02:29.280 will be to show that the vaccine prevents people from 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:41.680 developing symptoms of COVID nineteen and now our main story. 0:02:42.040 --> 0:02:46.040 The coronavirus is hitting Latin America in ways unseen in 0:02:46.080 --> 0:02:50.120 the developed world. One place that's seen a devastating surgeon 0:02:50.160 --> 0:02:55.240 cases is Mexico. But what makes Mexico's outbreak worse is 0:02:55.240 --> 0:02:59.160 that it's savaging a health care system that was already inadequate. 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:02.840 Doctors and nurses in Mexico say they lacked the most 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:07.960 basic of protective gear like masks and gloves. Hospitals are 0:03:08.000 --> 0:03:14.679 at capacity. In Mexico City, more than twenty thousand doctors, nurses, 0:03:14.720 --> 0:03:19.000 and hospital staff have caught the virus. It's another grim 0:03:19.040 --> 0:03:24.280 reminder that the illness is spiraling out of control. I 0:03:24.400 --> 0:03:27.840 spoke with Naha Katan, a Bloomberg reporter in Mexico City 0:03:27.840 --> 0:03:31.480 who has watched the crisis unfold. She talked about what 0:03:31.600 --> 0:03:35.280 happens when a crisis hits a system that was unprepared 0:03:35.320 --> 0:03:41.120 and underfunded in the best of times. What is the 0:03:41.160 --> 0:03:46.280 situation in Mexico right now with COVID nineteen. So as 0:03:46.320 --> 0:03:49.920 of last week, we saw a lot of record new cases, 0:03:50.280 --> 0:03:54.920 new new death toll records, including deaths rising above one 0:03:55.040 --> 0:03:59.560 thousand in one day. The government says it didn't all 0:03:59.600 --> 0:04:01.680 happen in one day, and that there's a lag, but 0:04:02.280 --> 0:04:05.400 the fact is that the cases were coming in, you know, 0:04:05.480 --> 0:04:08.400 at a at a faster pace, and the government itself 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:12.560 said we're now at at this peak, you know, pandemic. 0:04:12.600 --> 0:04:15.360 We're at this crisis time and at the same time, 0:04:15.960 --> 0:04:21.920 hospital specifically in Mexico City. We're at capacity. So I 0:04:22.000 --> 0:04:25.159 think a big question is if we haven't seen that 0:04:25.279 --> 0:04:29.120 full wave actually come in and be hospitalized yet, because 0:04:29.160 --> 0:04:31.080 we just saw the initial numbers and we don't know 0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:34.840 where they are on the timeline. What do you do 0:04:34.880 --> 0:04:38.599 when you have instead of eighty percent capacity? What happens 0:04:38.600 --> 0:04:42.000 if that capacity goes up and we lose space in 0:04:42.040 --> 0:04:45.880 the hospital system. And that kind of brings me to 0:04:47.040 --> 0:04:51.120 the Mexico City public hospital system. They've they've been they've 0:04:51.120 --> 0:04:53.560 been so bad for so long that even compared to 0:04:53.640 --> 0:04:57.040 Latin America, Mexico has one of the worst public health 0:04:57.080 --> 0:05:01.320 care systems. It spends the least on health as a 0:05:01.360 --> 0:05:05.159 percentage of GDP than every other Latin American country except 0:05:05.240 --> 0:05:10.240 for Peru and Venezuela. That was data I found from 0:05:10.279 --> 0:05:13.200 the World Bank. And we don't even know when this 0:05:13.279 --> 0:05:16.160 is over, and we're already at capacity in Mexico City, 0:05:16.279 --> 0:05:20.440 So there's just a lot of red flags going up here. 0:05:21.200 --> 0:05:24.880 Has there been any attempt physically with regard to hospitals 0:05:24.880 --> 0:05:29.599 and this capacity issue. Has there been any any discussion, 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:34.400 any proposal little to try and address some of these 0:05:34.600 --> 0:05:39.680 very significant capacity concerns within the hospitals, Oh absolutely, I 0:05:39.680 --> 0:05:45.560 mean the government has has built hospitals. Well, there's one 0:05:46.040 --> 0:05:49.280 in Mexico City that is kind of a makeshift, you know, 0:05:49.720 --> 0:05:53.680 health facility that that was built very quickly. Mexico has 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:59.119 highed thousands of healthcare workers according to official numbers, and 0:05:59.360 --> 0:06:02.920 they've made a huge push from the US to China 0:06:03.000 --> 0:06:06.559 to get ventilators brought here as quickly as possible, because 0:06:06.560 --> 0:06:09.040 we only had about five thousand in the whole country. 0:06:09.680 --> 0:06:12.480 I know there's a push being made to improve the situation. 0:06:13.160 --> 0:06:17.240 It's just a question of whether it's too little, too late, 0:06:18.160 --> 0:06:24.599 of whether the cases will overwhelm this attempt to to 0:06:24.680 --> 0:06:28.360 improve things. And the one sign we have is just 0:06:28.440 --> 0:06:33.880 that Mexico's healthcare workers infected by COVID did double in 0:06:33.920 --> 0:06:36.720 two weeks from you know, eleven thousands to twenty to 0:06:36.839 --> 0:06:41.000 a little over twenty thou and deaths have reached close 0:06:41.080 --> 0:06:43.800 to what we've seen in the US, which is where 0:06:44.360 --> 0:06:46.800 there have been many, many more cases than in Mexico. 0:06:47.560 --> 0:06:50.960 So that doesn't bode well for you know, Mexico's attempts 0:06:51.000 --> 0:06:54.400 to really to really overhaul the system as quickly as 0:06:54.400 --> 0:06:56.840 it's trying to do. I mean, I think the attempts 0:06:56.839 --> 0:07:01.040 are are good and an important, but it's not clear 0:07:01.040 --> 0:07:02.600 how much they can do in such a short time. 0:07:03.360 --> 0:07:07.560 What's the status of Mexico in terms of social distancing 0:07:07.600 --> 0:07:13.440 policies or lockdown enforcement. I mean officially, Mexico started reopening 0:07:13.840 --> 0:07:16.720 actually mid May in certain parts of the country. At 0:07:16.760 --> 0:07:20.960 the start of June, it's reopening further. Basically, they're they're 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:26.840 making sectors like the automobile sector and construction considered essential activity, 0:07:26.960 --> 0:07:30.080 so people who work in those sectors can leave their 0:07:30.120 --> 0:07:32.480 homes and go to their places of work if the 0:07:32.520 --> 0:07:36.000 companies have the security protocol set up. And what we've 0:07:36.040 --> 0:07:38.320 seen since then is that there has been a spike 0:07:38.840 --> 0:07:44.520 across Mexico in activity, even though unlike other countries, this 0:07:44.800 --> 0:07:48.360 beginning of a reopening is happening before Mexico actually reaches 0:07:48.440 --> 0:07:51.400 its peak. Uh. And that's caused a lot of questions 0:07:51.400 --> 0:07:57.400 among um some health experts in the fields. Mexico City 0:07:57.560 --> 0:08:00.480 was at the heart of the H one and one 0:08:00.520 --> 0:08:04.280 outbreak UM several years ago, and I'm just wondering has 0:08:04.320 --> 0:08:09.720 that informed Mexico's response to COVID nineteen at all. It has, 0:08:10.120 --> 0:08:13.240 you know, they're they're using this Sentinnel model, which is 0:08:13.240 --> 0:08:16.640 a way of projecting how many cases there really are 0:08:16.680 --> 0:08:21.160 without doing testing among the entire population. So there's limited 0:08:21.160 --> 0:08:23.080 testing and the government is saying, you know, this is 0:08:23.120 --> 0:08:27.240 what worked for us in the past, but again critics say, 0:08:27.400 --> 0:08:29.240 we need to test much more broadly. We don't really 0:08:29.240 --> 0:08:31.840 know what's happening. You know. There are the news reports 0:08:32.040 --> 0:08:36.480 and others coming out with figures death tolls that might 0:08:36.559 --> 0:08:39.280 might be much higher and cases that are that are 0:08:39.280 --> 0:08:42.240 definitely higher. It's actually raised a lot of questions about 0:08:42.600 --> 0:08:47.199 the data in Mexico. In general, Mexico is looking pretty grim, 0:08:47.240 --> 0:08:51.800 but the entire Latin American region is now considered the epicenter. 0:08:51.920 --> 0:08:57.040 The World Health Organization last week said that Brazil, Mexico 0:08:57.280 --> 0:09:00.600 and other countries here account for more than one million cases. 0:09:01.120 --> 0:09:05.160 They don't really see a peak, no stabilization really coming 0:09:05.200 --> 0:09:07.199 at this point, you know. And that's happening at the 0:09:07.240 --> 0:09:09.880 same time as a lot of statements out of the 0:09:09.960 --> 0:09:13.400 government suggests that things are much better. So you kind 0:09:13.400 --> 0:09:16.240 of get, on one hand information from the government that 0:09:16.400 --> 0:09:18.760 makes it that makes you think that maybe things are 0:09:18.800 --> 0:09:21.480 finally coming under control, maybe even as soon as as 0:09:21.480 --> 0:09:25.280 early as this week, but there's so much data from 0:09:25.320 --> 0:09:28.520 weeks past, and so much so many kind of record 0:09:28.520 --> 0:09:31.520 breaking death tolls, daily death tolls that have happened recently, 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:34.280 that it's just not clear where Mexico is on the 0:09:34.679 --> 0:09:39.160 you know, in the pandemic curve. And like other countries 0:09:39.520 --> 0:09:42.440 in the region in Latin America, Mexico faces poor health 0:09:42.480 --> 0:09:46.640 care systems and very few social safety nets because well, 0:09:46.760 --> 0:09:50.560 Mexico was slow to lockdown. They waited until the end 0:09:50.600 --> 0:09:53.480 of March, and the enforcement has been pretty lax in 0:09:53.520 --> 0:09:58.480 the lockdown because companies are just strongly urged to close 0:09:58.559 --> 0:10:01.880 that there's no there's a force shutdown, which is what 0:10:01.920 --> 0:10:04.720 the president has said. He's he's persuading companies, he's not 0:10:04.800 --> 0:10:07.880 forcing them to shut and people are returning to the streets. 0:10:08.280 --> 0:10:11.400 They have no money to eat, and there is very 0:10:11.400 --> 0:10:14.800 little money being spent on the economic recovery. The government 0:10:14.800 --> 0:10:16.400 has said it doesn't want to go further into debt, 0:10:16.920 --> 0:10:19.680 so it's not really doling out the kind of unemployment 0:10:19.679 --> 0:10:23.680 insurance or um you know, aid packages to the poor 0:10:23.880 --> 0:10:28.600 that you might be seeing another in other countries. And 0:10:28.600 --> 0:10:31.120 and this does raise a good question that I think 0:10:31.360 --> 0:10:34.559 you've been touching on but maybe if we could maybe 0:10:34.640 --> 0:10:38.400 unpack even more. You know, obviously there's been extreme economic 0:10:38.440 --> 0:10:43.840 fallout from COVID nineteen globally, but with specific reference to Mexico, 0:10:44.320 --> 0:10:49.400 what has been the economic fallout from COVID nineteen. The 0:10:49.679 --> 0:10:55.640 official jobs lost something around five is just kind of 0:10:55.679 --> 0:11:00.199 a sliver of of what's really happening because there's whole 0:11:00.240 --> 0:11:06.080 informal sector and very complex ways of measuring unemployment here. 0:11:06.600 --> 0:11:11.600 But there was one study also from a public agency 0:11:11.720 --> 0:11:16.719 about twelve million people either losing their jobs or not 0:11:16.840 --> 0:11:20.640 working because they're on furlough or just not working at 0:11:20.679 --> 0:11:23.280 that moment as of April. And that's that's a very 0:11:23.280 --> 0:11:27.720 big number. And one of the deputy governors of the 0:11:27.760 --> 0:11:33.440 Central Bank wrote along article where he argues that Mexico's 0:11:33.520 --> 0:11:36.840 labor crisis is far worse than the labor crisis in 0:11:36.880 --> 0:11:41.959 the US. Some people within the president's own party saying 0:11:41.960 --> 0:11:44.200 we need to go into further debt so that we 0:11:44.200 --> 0:11:47.280 can pay for the recovery and help the poor. And 0:11:48.480 --> 0:11:53.160 again that's not something that's that's shifting very very extensively, 0:11:53.240 --> 0:11:56.400 that the government is sticking to its message that it 0:11:57.440 --> 0:12:00.760 will do things through austerity. Through budget cuts and not 0:12:00.920 --> 0:12:06.160 through overspending and you know, bailouts to companies for example. 0:12:07.040 --> 0:12:10.360 Has there been any broader requests or asks of the 0:12:10.400 --> 0:12:12.920 government in terms of what steps they need to be 0:12:13.040 --> 0:12:19.000 taking in terms of maybe flattening that curve. The one 0:12:19.080 --> 0:12:24.319 constant is testing, testing, testing. There needs to be more testing. 0:12:25.720 --> 0:12:29.880 That's the suggestion coming from all sides. And it's it's 0:12:29.880 --> 0:12:34.440 the one area where Mexico is not it's not really boosting, 0:12:34.440 --> 0:12:44.720 it's testing numbers. That was Nahakatan and that's our show today. 0:12:45.760 --> 0:12:48.280 You can find naha story on the situation in Mexico 0:12:48.360 --> 0:12:51.360 City and how it has affected her own family on 0:12:51.480 --> 0:12:54.800 Bloomberg dot com. And for coverage of the outbreak from 0:12:54.840 --> 0:12:58.520 one and twenty bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot 0:12:58.559 --> 0:13:02.600 com slash Corona of Virus and if you like the show, 0:13:03.000 --> 0:13:05.640 please leave us a review and a rating on Apple 0:13:05.679 --> 0:13:09.200 Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to help more 0:13:09.240 --> 0:13:13.600 listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is 0:13:13.600 --> 0:13:18.880 produced by Topher foreheads Jordan Gospore, Magnus Hendrickson and me 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:23.840 Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported by Naha Katan. 0:13:24.880 --> 0:13:29.199 Original music by Leo Citrin. Our editors are Francesca Levi 0:13:29.559 --> 0:13:34.239 and Rick Shine. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. 0:13:34.800 --> 0:13:35.679 Thanks for listening.