(Mexico City) The president of Mexico said on Tuesday he was feeling “pretty well” after testing positive for COVID-19 for the second time the day before, in a country where a health official asked people not to not be systematically tested, even if you have a cough or sore throat.
Posted at 6:51 p.m.
“I’m feeling pretty good, right now we’re not going to need hospitalization,” said Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, 68, who had received a third AstraZeneca booster dose in early December.
“Fortunately, this is a variant which does not have the level or degree of danger of the Delta variant, I am experimenting with it,” he added in a video message broadcast to the time for his daily press conference.
The head of state said his temperature was 36.1 degrees and that he had some symptoms, including “pain in the body”.
Mr. Lopez Obrador had received a backup vaccine on December 7, at the opening of the third dose for those over 60 years old. He had already been infected a year ago.
Its health manager Hugo Lopez-Gatell at the same time advised against systematic screening, “which can represent a problem for the whole world, because the capacity to manufacture COVID-19 tests is limited, not in Mexico, but in the United States. whole world “.
Symptoms of COVID-19 (cough, sore throat…) can be a sign of “other respiratory illnesses,” Lopez-Gatell said during the press conference, taking his own example: “I have had a common cold last week ”.
“So instead of running to the kiosk (testing center) to get tested, you have to stay at home to avoid infecting other people,” he said.
“We must monitor our state of health,” he added, however, mentioning in particular the rate of oxygenation.
Mexico is in absolute value the fifth most affected country in the world with 300,412 deaths for 4.1 million cases since March 2020 according to official figures.
After three months of calm and normal life, the epidemic has taken off again with the now dominant Omicron variant. Mexico recorded a record number of cases in one day (more than 30,000) on Saturday.