Yellow on Monday

The front page headlines on the newspaper "El Universal" yesterday said that the COVID warning status in Mexico City and the neighboring State of Mexico would return to "yellow" on Monday due to the surge in cases of Omicron.

The Mexican Secretariat of Health has a "traffic light" system to warn of the level of danger from COVID.  Mexico City, in fact, most of the nation had been at the "green light" level, the lowest level of precaution, since last October.  

Even with the surge of cases in the new year, the government did not raise the alert because they said that hospitalizations had not risen dramatically.  The government downplayed the gravity of Omicron right along.  President López Obrador called Omicron "un covidcito"... a little COVID.  (He later came down with COVID for the second time.)  Deputy Health Minister Hugo López Gatell called Omicron no worse than a common cold.  Now, as hospital admissions are rising, the government relented and raised the alert level up to "yellow", a medium risk.  

The change basically means nothing; the government will not impose any closures.  However, some major Mexico City museums... the National Museum of Anthropology and the Templo Mayor Museum among them... have announced that they have closed until further notice.  The school that Alejandro's nephew attends returned to on-line classes after the end of Christmas vacation.

As you can see from this map, taken from the government website, most of northern Mexico is now at "orange", high alert.  Quintana Roo, the state where Cancún and the other Riviera Maya resorts are located, is also at orange level.

Last Thursday Mexico reported more than 60,000 new cases, a record for the entire pandemic.  Keep in mind, the real numbers are much, much higher.  Take the case of my friend Alejandro.  He learned that he was positive from an at-home test, and, fortunately, his symptoms were not life threatening, and he never had to go to a hospital.  His case, like thousands of others, is not counted in the official statistics.  He is recovering, but, even though was never in grave danger, his experience was certainly a heck of a lot worse than "a common cold."