August 4, 2020
Friends of Quintana Roo:
Once again, I ask that you all continue to do your part to protect our state, and that you follow all the rule s and protocols in place to decrease, control and reduce the number of Coronavirus infections, which affects the whole world.
We must keep taking care of ourselves and follow preventive measures. These include wearing a mask in public, keeping social distance of more than one and a half meters between people, not crowding, washing our hands frequently, not touching our faces, not getting on crowded public transportation and reporting any infraction of capacity restrictions in these spaces, and going to the hospital on time if we need urgent help
Many of the deaths we have recorded have occurred because patients do not arrive on time, and by not arriving on time they make it harder for our very capable doctors, whom I thank for their work, professionalism, and effort, for everything they have given to Quintana Roo, to act in the best way possible.
We must get to the hospital as soon as possible to save lives; this will allow us in Quintana Roo to have much greater control of this virus, that is causing so much damage to our population. Seeking help immediately will also allow us to stick to our economic recovery process, and will allow us to move from orange to yellow, or from red to orange where we are today and where we want to be.
This is not just a matter for the Governor or the state government to decide.
It’s your decision, of all citizens.
We continue to collect and monitor data that shows how many positive cases we have every day, what the risk of contagion is, and what the current occupancy levels are in our hospital infrastructure. This date informs our traffic light system, which guides our economic recovery program.
In the last few days I’ve had many conversations with business leaders in Quintana Roo, from both the south and north regions of the state.
They have said to me: “Carlos, get us out of the red, put us in the orange”. And my response has been: it’s not the state government’s decision what color we are at, it’s the decision of our citizens, and the work and commitment they put into efforts to take care of themselves and others.
I have also debated whether to open up hotel occupancy and the use of restaurants. The decision is based on our commitment to taking care of the health of our workers, of Quintana Roo’s families, and our visitors. Taking on this risk makes us vulnerable to further outbreaks of contagion that could exhaust our hospital infrastructure.
If this occurs, we may have a collapse in our hospitals and health centers who so far have been able to provide care and service to patients who need it most.
As I said at the beginning, we must seek a balance between health care, care for ourselves, care for our families, care for our society, care for our cities, care for our state so that we can then move more strongly into our economic recovery.
I will be open to dialogue, to review, to verify, to supervise all the actions we need to carry out, and to take the right decision based on what is happening in all of Quintana Roo.
And we will always do so thinking of our people, of the people who live here, of the people who came to make a home, to seek success, to find a job, to get ahead in their economic and social development, and we will work in that same direction.
I want to invite all of you who work in the tourism sector, those who work in the services area, those who work in any other sector in our state, we must unite to move forward, to take care of our health and then we can recover our economy.
I know how worrying it is to not be able to bring food home, to not have a way to support one’s family; for that reason, we must all unite in order to reignite our state’s economic development.
Let’s take care of our health, let’s take care of our hospital infrastructure, because that is what will allow us to recover our growth and economic development.
I invite you all to work together, let’s move forward together with the strength and solidarity that the people of Quintana Roo have always shown and that today we need more than ever, because Together We Will Succeed.
Thank you very much.