Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has revealed that is currently being treated for mild symptoms of the COVID-19 virus. He made this disclosure on Sunday.
This bit of news has set alarm bells ringing in the country as the 67-year-old was a heavy smoker until he suffered a serious heart attack in 2013.
Reports said Obrador’s history of heart problems and high blood pressure may complicate doctors’ efforts to combat the COVID-19 infection.
“Health professionals are monitoring continuously in case there is a sign of alarm that could lead to hospitalization,” health official Jose Luis Alomia Zegarra told a regular evening news conference.
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Anybody with Lopez Obrador’s health profile would be closely watched, including “regular monitoring of the vital signs, of oxygenation,” Alomia added, in response to questions about the president’s past heart problems and high blood pressure.
Although Lopez Obrador has vowed to keep working, he said, for now, he would step back from the 7 a.m. daily news conferences that are a part of the fabric of Mexican political life since he took office in December 2018.
Instead, his Interior Minister Olga Sanchez will look to take his place and will pit his engagements in comparison to Lopez Obrador’s fiery lectures on where Mexico went wrong under previous administrations.
The veteran leftist made his diagnosis public at the end of Mexico’s deadliest week in the pandemic, leaving it with the fourth-highest global tally of infections.
Saying he felt optimistic, Lopez Obrador added that he still planned to take a telephone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday to discuss the possible acquisition of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine.
Health ministry officials said tracing of Lopez Obrador’s recent contacts has started. Several close aides have contracted the virus during the pandemic and he has always insisted that he is in good health.
Despite his surging popularity during the pandemic, his management of the crisis has drawn heavy criticism from his political adversaries, who say he has too often downplayed it, taking inadequate steps to combat the virus.
Smokers are liable to die young. This is the practical example.