Mexico City, Mexico — Oliva López Arellano, CDMX Secretary of Health, reported that epidemiological surveillance is being maintained and confirmed that no additional cases of the Omicron variant have been identified in the capital city.
Arellano also confirmed that the Delta variant continues to predominate in the cases analyzed.
Regarding the first Omicron case identified at the beginning of December in CDMX, Dr. Oliva López affirmed that the person was isolated and no additional cases have been found in Mexico City.
She added that there has been one patient identified in the Metropolitan Area of the Valley of Mexico that could be a second case, in either Ecatepec or Tlalnepantla, areas that do not belong to Mexico City, but that possible Omicron case has not been verified.
The local Health Secretary pointed out that epidemiological surveillance is being maintained in order to identify the variants of the cases analyzed.
“It is the way to identify the variants and there has been no variation, the Delta variant continues to predominate. It is the dominant variant in all the samples that we are sequencing,” she said.
She said that it is not yet known how the Omicron variant could impact Mexico City, but warned that it will depend on the mobility of people during the Christmas, year-end and early January celebrations.
“We do not know how it will behave. So far, we only have those reports in terms of genomic surveillance and Delta continues to prevail, which is the one that was much more efficient in the city to replace and displace the rest of the variants.”
She added that sampling, sequencing and surveillance are being maintained given that in other countries, “the accelerated displacement of other variants by Omicron is being reported.”
Currently in Mexico City, figures are stable. “As we have said, we must always observe the data. So far, what it shows us is that we are stable and with quite positive numbers in the reduction of hospitalizations, but we have to be continually monitoring day-by-day for any situation that could indicate a change in this stability.”