Although official records still show no confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the municipality of Chapala, a well-respected local doctor begs to differ, citing personal experience as both attending physician and patient of the disease.
Dr. Lupita Cevallos, a general practitioner who has lived and worked at lakeside for the past 11 years, tells the Guadalajara Reporter that she had contact with a patient showing severe symptoms of SARS-Cov-2 infection on April 14.
According to the doctor, the U.S. citizen, aged 72, had visitors for three weeks in his Ajijic home prior to becoming ill. Following arrangements by his daughter, he was airlifted to the Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center in Houston, where the diagnosis was confirmed three days later, she says.
Understanding the risks, Cevallos immediately put herself into self-isolation. She began feeling common Covid-19 symptoms ten days later. She says she has been tested for the disease twice since then.
An oral PCR test applied at the Jocotepec Community Hospital on April 25 came back negative. A nasopharyngeal PCR test practiced three days later at the Unidad de Patología Clínica (UPC), a government-authorized private laboratory in Guadalajara, was also negative, but Cevallos says a positive blood serum test for IgG antibodies shows that she had been exposed to the disease and also suggests she is no longer infectious.
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