translated from Spanish: Medical staff die in lower proportion than rest of the population: Health

Health personnel become seriously ill and die to a lesser proportion than the general population, so it does not pose a higher risk of being a doctor in Mexico, said José Luis Alomía, Director of Epidemiology at the Ministry of Health following Amnesty International’s report that ranks the country as the world’s leading place in medical personnel.
As of September 3rd, a thousand 410 deaths of health workers were added, of which 49% are doctors, 29% have other occupations, 18% are nursing, 2% in dentistry and 2% in laboratory. Plus 104 thousand 590 positive cases.
Find out: Mexico, the country where the most health workers have died from COVID
These figures place Mexico above countries such as the United States that have recorded 1,077 deaths of health workers, and in Brazil, 634, where infection and mortality rates have been high throughout the pandemic.
However, Alomía rejected the comparison by considering that it “does not have a technical livelihood, nor is it most appropriate when comparing total or absolute numbers”.
In fact, he said, the “global or international” comparison could not even be made, as there are countries that do not even report the decesses of health personnel in the reports of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).
“It has to do with different factors, the total number of people who die is due to a model at a certain time of epidemiological surveillance or how each country keeps track of its mortality,” he said at this Thursday’s evening conference.
It explained that the Ministry of Health had measured the impact of the virus among the medical population and posed no greater risk when compared to the contagion and lethality of the general population.
“We have already seen that with the general population the serious disease was presented at 25%, because the surveillance system focuses on the serious disease. Among health personnel, 93% developed mild, 7% developed serious illness. This specific group became less ill compared to the population.”
In addition, the lethality in this group, of the total confirmed with PCR test and the group that died as a result of the disease, the lethality is 3.8%. The group of professionals dies less than the general population.”
Therefore, health professionals become less seriously ill and die in a smaller proportion, which “does not show an increased risk or frequency of serious illness or death relative to the general population. If it was above average, we might think it’s a risk to be a doctor in Mexico. The data doesn’t point to this.”
It recalled that as part of the Guidelines of the Ministry of Health at the beginning of the pandemic they raised that health workers who had any signs or symptoms of the disease “should be sampled, classified and sent home and comply with isolation. This in 100% of suspected cases.”
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Original source in Spanish