Mexico's COVID-19 outbreak sweeps Baja California nursing home

Although a federal judge ordered to implement health measures to prevent COVID-19 infections at the El Consuelo nursing home at Mexicali, Baja California, 16 elderly people who live there and seven workers who take care of them contracted the disease.

After the relatives of one of the residents of the nursing home obtained an amparo to demand preventive protocols and immediate care due to the health emergency, the owners of the place decided to run tests at a private hospital .

The Baja California Third District Judged granted a suspension so that said preventive protocols were implemented and thus the resident could receive medical care .

Moreover, it urged state authorities to test her for COVID-19 .

Complying to the measures ordered by the judge, the State Health Ministry visited the nursing home on May 29 to evaluate the health conditions of those inside and detected two COVID-19 suspected cases and asserted it would return to monitor the situation on June 2 .

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Nevertheless, the private hospital that ran the tests confirmed 23 infections , reason why the nursing home remains closed since June 1 , and the residents were sent to their homes or any other place where they can stay, without any protocols to prevent further infections nor monitoring .

In addition to this, local authorities said they lacked the power to establish protocols or measures to prevent infections at the nursing home.

According to legal proof, the Mexicali government informed the judge it does not have “specialized or trained personnel and it cannot implement a protocol or security measures to face a health emergency like the current one.”

Likewise, the local Social Development department added that it does not have the necessary power to prevent infections and denied any omissions on its part that put the health of El Consuelo residents at risk.

“The authority I represent does not have the power to issue measures to take care of the elderly people who live at the El Consuelo nursing home,” said the director of the decentralized organization Alejandra María Ang Hernández .

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In that vein, Guillermo Rivera , the plaintiff’s lawyer, informed that there was an expansion on the demand on June 8 to prove state authorities were responsible for the outbreak at the nursing home since, at the time of its closing, most relatives of the elderly people ignored they were infected , which has put all of them in danger.

EL UNIVERSAL

informed that the federal government only has the health control of 1.2% nursing homes in the country for the National Institute for Elderly People (INAPAM) and the National System for the Comprehensive Development of Families (DIF) are in charge of only 10 out of 819 nursing homes in the country.

Nonetheless, according to the INAPAM’s structure, it only allows evaluating private state nursing homes , such as El Consuelo.

In that regard, according to Ana Luisa Gamble , director of geriatric care of the INAPAM, the last evaluation involved 300 nursing homes in 15 Mexican states from September to December 2019.

She asserted that the institute keeps in touch with nursing homes in order to solve doubts regarding the implemented protocol to prevent COVID-19 infections .

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