Mexican President Obrador tests positive for Covid-19
MEXICO CITY: Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s history of heart problems and high blood pressure will complicate doctors’ efforts to combat the Covid-19 infection poised to undermine the towering role he has taken in public life.
The 67-year-old, who was a heavy smoker until he suffered a serious heart attack in 2013, said on Sunday he was being treated for mild symptoms of the novel coronavirus.
“Health professionals are monitoring continuously in case there is a sign of alarm that could lead to hospitalisation,” health official Jose Luis Alomia Zegarra told a regular evening news conference.
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 7am daily news conferences that have permeated the fabric of Mexican political life since he took office in December 2018.
Instead, his interior minister Olga Sanchez must take the reins at what are likely to be subdued events by 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.
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.