TIJUANA — The state of Baja California, directly south of the border from California, has set a record for the number of people on ventilators since the pandemic started.
As of Thursday morning, there were 205 COVID-19 patients requiring mechanical ventilation to stay alive in Baja hospitals.
“It’s a record for Baja California, this is the highest number of people we’ve ever had on ventilators,” said the state’s Secretary of Health Alonso Pérez Rico.
During his daily briefing with the media, Pérez Rico announced that of the 1,005 active cases in the state, 497 ended up in hospitals, meaning almost half required hospital care … and of those patients, about 41 percent needed to be placed on ventilators.
According to Pérez Rico, hospitals in Baja California are operating at 70 percent capacity, although in Tijuana, it’s almost 86 percent with only 26 available beds.
Since March, 4,719 people have died in Baja as a result of the virus — 2,032 of the victims were from Tijuana, a city of about 2 million residents.
In comparison, according to its website, the County of San Diego with 3.1 million residents, has had 114,248 positive cases with 1,217 deaths.
