Hospital Joya & COVID Vaccine Update [] BeWellSanMiguel Patient Advocacy Services

Hospital Joya in San Miguel de Allende

Be Well San Miguel is pleased to announce our relationship with the new Hospital Joya in San Miguel de Allende.  Watch the Atencion and digital forums for announcements about the official opening of Hospital Joya.  Our team Deborah Bickel, Sue Leonard, and Dr. Emilio Ramirez have advocated for its presence in SMA over the last year. Dr. Ramirez in particular will be intimately involved in decisions concerning quality and continuity of care, recruitment of high-quality specialists, and oversight of emergency and critical care services.  Among other special considerations, Be Well is negotiating discounts on services and prompt free referrals to vetted specialists for our members. Be Well advocates will be available to hospitalized patients when needed and will assist in discharge planning for our members and clients.

Run by the prestigious Grupo Médico Joya, this is a second level hospital equipped with the latest technology and a team of highly qualified physicians 24 hours, seven days a week.

Hospital Joya will offer comprehensive services including the only acute respiratory center in the city with the latest generation ventilators.

The ICU (Intensive care unit) has one isolated and two regular beds. Each bed has advanced vital sign monitors, and are adaptable for various therapies including the latest generation ventilators ensuring state of the art care for patients requiring advanced monitoring and therapy. The intensive care units will be staffed at all times by critical care specialists, guaranteeing the highest quality of continuous coverage essential to optimal outcomes for intensive care patients.

The emergency physicians are highly trained to manage critically ill patients including those with acute stroke and cardiac events as well as any other life-threatening trauma or acute pathology.

The Hospital will have two operating rooms equipped to perform all types of surgeries from the simplest to the most complex. It also has two recovery units for postoperative monitoring.

In addition, there will be a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) equipped and operated by highly trained personnel to provide optimal care for those critical cases requiring such services. This area is equipped with high-end ventilators capable of caring for pediatric patients and newborn infants as small as 100 grams.

The hospital has 11 private rooms ranging in size from junior, standard and master. All rooms have an emergency button and intercom with the nursing station.

Vaccines and the new variant COVID19 infections 

Many clients have been asking questions about the new strains, sometimes called “variants” or mutations. The findings from a report released February 15th by scientists at Scripps raised an alarm that cannot be ignored without dire consequences. It reports that the B117 SARS-CoV-2 variant, identified in 33 states thus far, will dominate other strains in the coming weeks, triggering major COVID19 surges such as those seen in Portugal and the United Kingdom—unless the United States immediately scales up surveillance and mitigation efforts. B117 which is 35 to 45% more transmissible than normal COVID19, most likely jumped from Great Britain around November and spread during holiday travel.

Mutation of any virus is in no way surprising as their survival depends on them finding ways to more effectively enter a host population. This news is to be expected and was anticipated by scientists and public health officials. However, efforts to identify and limit the spread of variants collided with economic pressures to reduce shutdowns and a worldwide reluctance to limit travel over the holidays.

Foremost on peoples’ minds is whether the current vaccines will be as effective in protecting against the variants of COVID19 or at a minimum vastly reduce the severity of disease caused by these new variants. Equally worrisome is the rapidity of their spread while nearly every country, including the United States, is experiencing delays in vaccine roll out.

Unfortunately, efforts to better identify, trace and contain the variants were insufficient worldwide. US scientists are now pushing for a significant increase in testing for DNA alterations of the virus combined with a rapid scale up of tracing and containment nationwide.

There is no evidence yet that the B117 SARS-CoV-2 variant is more lethal than the original strain of COVID19. In January infectious-diseases expert Anthony S. Fauci said that the present vaccines may have less of an impact against variants but will be “effective” in reducing the severity of COVID19 related disease.

Vaccines are called “effective” when they reduce the incidence of severe symptoms against the disease they target. A vaccine would have to cause “sterilizing” immunity to reliably prevent transmission as well as severe disease. Although this is the gold standard of all vaccine development, vaccines capable of doing this are very rare. Small pox is one of the few vaccines to have done this.

If a COVID19 vaccine does not sterilize, the vaccinated may have few or no symptoms of COVID19 but will still be able to transmit the disease. Transmission is assumed to be far lessened in those carrying the virus without symptoms. Historically, disease control or eradication relies on preventing disease spread through wide use of effective vaccines and the natural immunity conferred to those who have suffered the disease.

The present US administration is focusing on scaling up research aimed at establishing how well current vaccines prevent transmission as well as a world-wide push to adapt present vaccines or develop new ones that will be more effective against these and future variants.

Realistically, public health experts believe the current vaccine efforts are both lowering overall transmission rates as well as lessening symptoms. In light of the information about B117 SARS-CoV-2 variant, efforts to radically fast track current vaccinations are imperative. 

One very good piece of news regarding transmissibility of COVID19 post vaccine by mRNA vaccines emerged February 17th.  Fauci reported that studies from Spain and Israel published this month, show the amount of viral load — or the amount of the COVID19- virus in someone’s body — is significantly lower if someone gets infected after they’ve been vaccinated, compared with people who get infected and didn’t have the vaccine. Lower viral load means a much lower chance of passing the virus to someone else, Fauci says.” There’s a direct correlation with viral load and transmission,” he says. “In other words, higher viral load, higher transmissibility; lower viral load, very low transmissibility.”

As you look at the quickly changing information about emerging COVID19 vaccines, look for information about effectiveness against variants as well as measures of transmissibility after other types of vaccines. Also evaluate whether the effectiveness of vaccines is being measured in laboratory settings rather than in human populations. Finally, be prepared for the need to re-immunize in the course of the year after vaccination.