By Enyichukwu Enemanna
President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Wednesday admitted that he did “briefly faint” over the weekend before he was diagnosed with COVID-19, an incident his spokesman had previously denied.
“I had a crisis, because my blood pressure suddenly went down,” the President said during a meeting with military engineers working on his pet project, a tourist train on the Yucatan peninsula.
“It was like I fell asleep. I didn’t lose consciousness, but I did briefly faint, because of the low blood pressure.”
López Obrador had been on a working tour of the Yucatan peninsula Sunday when he tested positive for the coronavirus, the third time of his COVID-19 complication.
He said his doctors had been concerned enough to administer a liter of rehydration fluids, stating that doctors wanted to fly him back to the capital in a stretcher.
But he wrote in his social media accounts Sunday that “it isn’t serious.”
Local media had reported that López Obrador had felt faint Sunday morning and had to cancel his tour.
The president said he was flown back to Mexico City aboard an “air ambulance,” but insisted that he he was not carried in a stretcher as against media reports.
López Obrador, 69, who has acknowledged a history of heart problems, said his heart was “not at all affected.”
The President caught COVID-19 in early 2021 and was ill, but recovered after receiving what he described at the time as an experimental treatment. In January 2022, he announced he had come down with COVID-19 a second time, amid a spike in coronavirus infections in Mexico.
López Obrador declined to enact mandatory mask mandates and he refused to wear a mask even at the peak of the pandemic unless it was absolutely necessary, as on airline flights.
He famously refused to use Mexico’s presidential jet, which he recently announced had been sold to Tajikistan.
