Mexico City – On New Year’s Day, dozens of people lined up with empty oxygen tanks in one of Mexico City’s hardest-hit cities to take advantage of a free oxygen refill offer for COVID-19 patients.
Jorge Infante took his place in line at 8 in the morning with three tanks that he wanted to fill for his sick relatives. He found out about the offer, only on the third day of Friday, through Facebook.
Oxygen demand as the virus spreads through the capital of 9 million people has raised prices and made the lines longer. Infante said filling his three tanks for free would save his family about $ 45 a day.
Iztapalapa, the capital’s largest district and one of the hardest hit by the pandemic, is a large area with limited resources.
“Economic conditions are not the first world,” said Carlos Morales, Iztapalapa’s health director. “That means people are suffering to get tanks.”
Morales said he is trying to fill about 50 tanks a day.
Elsewhere in the capital, some residents spent New Year’s Eve in lines winding down a street and around a corner, waiting to fill oxygen containers for relatives suffering from COVID-19.
Blanca Nina Méndez Rojas was waiting in line on Thursday to fill a tank for her brother, who was recently discharged from a public hospital after contracting COVID-19.
“I just left it disconnected (from oxygen), so it has to stay fully tilted so that it doesn’t shake or get in trouble until we get back with the tank,” Méndez Rojas said, noting “two years ago weeks a refill cost 70 pesos ($ 3.50), and now it’s 150 pesos ($ 7.50). ”
In a city where people are afraid to go to hospitals and where those who go will have trouble finding a bed, it becomes a matter of life and death.
Juan José Ledesma, a retiree from Mexico City, fell ill with his wife and son. When his test came back positive on December 16, he had to stay home – and see a private doctor – because the local hospital had no room.
“I took medication prescribed by a private doctor because what happened was that I went to a health center and there was no room left,” Ledesma said. “There was no room because too many people came in” for treatment.
Since then, his son – who has recovered – has had to go out three or four times a day to try to fill his father’s oxygen tank.
“The price has gone up two or three times,” Ledesma said. Reflecting on the problem, he began to cry softly. “I’m thinking of rural areas, where things are harder, harder, and people have to wait longer, or they can’t even afford it.”
Iván, an employee of an oxygen refill shop who only gave his first name because his bosses did not allow him to talk to reporters, admitted that sometimes there were so many people waiting, desperate for gas, that they could not fill all their canisters completely.
“There are times when we don’t have enough oxygen to completely fill everyone’s tanks,” he said. “There are times when we need to reduce refilling so that everyone on the line can bring at least oxygen home to their relatives.”
To make matters worse, city officials did little to combat price increases that doubled or tripled the price of a refill – but closed a black market where industrial-grade oxygen producers sold canisters for medical use. Industrial oxygen, used to power torches with acetylene, is not as pure as medical grade gas.
The city government has begun a program to provide people with oxygen canisters or oxygen concentrators, which are machines that draw oxygen from the air and do not need to be refilled. But there are not enough to go around and buying one of the cars on the private market is prohibitively expensive for most families.
Before the pandemic, basic cars started at around $ 900, but prices have since reported that they have risen to $ 1,500 or more.
“Prices for concentrators have gone through the roof, there have been too many profits,” Méndez Rojas said.