5-6 minutes
Every day, thousands of Mexicans crowd a massive food
market that is a linchpin of the capital’s food supply, though it sits
at the heart of a major hotspot for the virus.
Mexico City’s
sprawling Central de Abasto market, stretching across an area equivalent
to about 327 football pitches, poses a major headache for officials
trying to keep food supplies flowing without magnifying the spread of
the coronavirus.
It is a daunting task in a market known to
attract about a half a million people a day in normal times, according
to figures from officials in Iztapalapa, a neighborhood with the highest
numbers of coronavirus infections in Mexico.
In addition to
shoppers and wholesale buyers who throng the market at night to supply
retail outlets in the metropolis, another 100,000 workers typically cram
the corridors lined with sacks of potatoes, rice and boxes of bananas.
Local
officials have not detailed how many visitors the market is receiving
during the quarantine, but the market’s organizers say vehicle traffic
has fallen by about 30%.
In early May, the capital’s government
included the shopping complex in a list of 89 areas deemed to have
“high-risk of contagion” as part of efforts to prevent an outbreak.
Still,
completely shutting the market that serves a sizeable swath of Mexico’s
25 million people is not an option, said Mexico City Mayor Claudia
Sheinbaum, because it would devastate the regional food supply.
“Central
de Abasto cannot be closed,”Sheinbaum said late last month. “We are
taking very strict measures so that as few people as possible go.”
People
are pictured at the Central de Abastos, one of the world's largest
wholesale market complexes, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19)
outbreak, in Mexico City, Mexico May 11, 2020. Picture taken May 11,
2020. REUTERS/Gustavo Graf
Unlike
those living in the leafy upscale areas of Mexico’s cosmopolitan
capital, the drivers, cleaners and vendors in the working class
Iztapalapa area say they have no choice but to risk the virus.
“The
government says to stay in quarantine. So how are we going to eat?”,
asked Fernando Torres, one of the thousands of people who works in the
market.
“I know that I am in the hands of God,” added Torres,
sporting a cloth mask over his face. “If God says, ‘The coronavirus will
take you,’ it will take me. But I try to take care of myself.”
With
about 2,500 confirmed cases and more than 200 deaths, Iztapalapa
accounts for about a fifth of the total number of infections and deaths
related to the virus in Mexico City, the epicenter of the pandemic in
the country.
Experts attribute the rapid spread of the disease in
part to the location of the neighborhood, the most populous in the
capital, connecting the center of the sprawling city with the dense
suburbs of the state of Mexico.
Residents are further handicapped
by poor public services, such as scarcity of drinking water. More than a
third of the population lives in poverty in the city borough, according
to government data.
Two of the four public hospitals serving
COVID-19 patients in Iztapalapa were saturated on Saturday, according to
government data. Area funeral homes and crematoriums have also said
they were getting slammed.
Reuters made repeated requests for an
interview with Clara Brugada, mayor of the Iztapalapa area, but she was
not made available in time for publication.
“CUTTING THE TRANSMISSION CHAIN”
Due
to the coronavirus, the market is operating at 85% of capacity. It
typically receives more than 15,000 products every day from all over the
country in more than 60,000 cargo vehicles, officials say.
The
decision to tighten surveillance came just after market authorities
acknowledged about 25 people had been infected and reported two deaths
related to the virus at the facility, where about $9 billion changes
hands each year.
As part of the precautionary measures, children
and pregnant women are prohibited from entering, while health personnel
have begun to carry out COVID-19 tests. Hundreds of police officers and
other public employees are stationed to measure visitors’ temperatures.
“What we are trying (to do) is cut the transmission chain,” said Javier Serna, health officer at the Iztapalapa mayor’s office.
However,
Serna said 34 additional cases of coronavirus were detected last week
after conducting 450 tests among market personnel.
In the
neighborhood around the market, dozens of shops remain open and
residents can be seen walking without face masks — in contrast to the
desolate streets in more affluent areas of the capital.
Angeles
Medina, 33, lost her job in a plastic factory after the coronavirus
outbreak, and now sells tacos and coffee outside a metro station 10
minutes from the market.
“I am afraid of getting infected or bringing an infection to my house, but we have to work,” Medina said.
Noe Torres
Join Geezgo for free. Use Geezgo's end-to-end encrypted Chat with your Closenets (friends, relatives, colleague etc) in personalized ways.>>
Comments
Post a Comment