Argentina, at the top of the countries with the highest daily rate of new coronavirus cases

Irene Hartmann

07/09/2020 - 17:46

• Clarín.com

• Society

While reality is dynamic and changing, the list of the countries where the coronavirus hits the hardest is a photo: comparing it with the one taken a few months ago allows us to understand how the virus was moving;

that is, where and how the pandemic is at any given time.

Sounds good?

Yes, but no relativism overshadows the distaste of living in the eternal Argentine quarantine and knowing that we have the

.

Specifically,

, a figure that this Monday was only surpassed by three small countries: the Kingdom of Bahrain (334), Israel (262) and the Maldives (246.7).

A clarification on the variable "

".

In the tedious daily analysis of the pandemic numbers, a common mistake is to focus on numbers taken out of context.

Thus, while the new infected of the day (7,000, 8,000, 10,000 ...) speak clearly of the advance of Covid at the local level, they are little useful to compare ourselves with countries that could have half or twice the population, half or twice the population density, half or twice the population mobility ...

"All, all, all the figures that one looks at the pandemic have their flaws," emphasized physicist Jorge Aliaga, researcher at Conicet, former dean of the Faculty of Exact Sciences of the UBA, current secretary of Planning of the National University of Hurlingham and a restless one of the statistics of the Covid-19 in the country.

However, he granted

that the incidence rate is a useful indicator to “soften” some obvious nuances between nations, and thus enable comparison.

In this case, the question is

coronavirus

there are

.

The evolution of the rate of new cases

Source:

Infographic:

The answer will not make anyone happy: since the end of August (about ten days after the unforgettable “quarantine does not exist” of President Alberto Fernández), Argentina started a climb towards the worst positions in the world in terms of infections, with 223 new daily cases (average of the previous seven days) of Covid, always per million inhabitants.

This Monday, according to a global survey carried out by the Johns Hopkins University, in first place was the small

an Arab country whose surface is less than 4% the size of Tucumán, with a population of one and a half million people. .

Unless the incidence rate is looked at, the

accumulated

cases

in that island region, 54,000 since the pandemic began, seem incomparable to the more than

.

The comparison with

or the

would seem just as forced

.

The first of these countries has 8 million inhabitants, while the Maldives, only half a million.

The regional trend was different in mid-August: Argentina was not in fourth but in seventh place in terms of its incidence rate and the world rate of new infections per million inhabitants was led by

, with 192 new cases per day.

In the middle is Costa Rica, with 204. Brazil follows, with 186;

Spain, with 181;

Montenegro, with 175. This unfortunate "top 10" is completed with small Andorra and its 168 new daily cases per million inhabitants.

The ten countries with the most cases per day

Source:

Infographic:

Perhaps it is

worth

noting that the

among the top ten

, where infections (6.20 million accumulated) and deaths from

(more than 190,000) became ungovernable.

However, if the population variable is entered (a nation with 328 million people), things take on a different color.

Specific weight

Asked about these numbers and in a context of strong political bidding to strengthen or loosen confinement, Aliaga explained that the rate of daily infections must be qualified with deaths.

“Although there is no collapse here, the cases appear little by little.

Today Argentina has a rate of

in terms of curves comes

growing

, with a very slow speed, between

that has been going on for many weeks ”.

For this reason, “while

had a maximum number of deaths per million inhabitants, which in April was greater than the one we have now, the truth is that

.

Go up slower, but keep going up.

This is the concern ”.

, head of infectology at Hospital Álvarez,

spoke in the same cautious tone - especially in reference to the "high leveling" of the city of Buenos Aires

.

The doctor was disappointed by the high rate of infections in Argentina and assured that "although a quarantine was put in place with which we all agreed, things happened that should not have happened."

On the one hand, "the borders were closed late", but also "although the curve flattened,

because Argentina has

."

And he pointed out: “We did not say this with the newspaper on Monday but we have been saying it from the first moment, although some say otherwise.

We believe that the solution is to

.

In the city of Buenos Aires, I find a positive;

I go to his house with the

plan

, I look for all the contacts he has, I do the saliva test, and in this way it is being found that almost 20% of those contacts are positive ”.

"We have been quarantined for six months and we are worse than the whole world where shorter quarantines were made.

If you look at the number of tests that Chile or other Latin American pairs have,

.

If we keep keeping people locked up but we don't test, we will continue the same ”.

One step further, Aliaga is concerned that, after the peak, "there will be a

like in Europe." It is because, "if the cases here do not explode, it is because there are a lot of people who continue to take care of themselves, not because there are herd immunity. The danger is that movements are resumed without explaining that this is a very unstable balance. The danger is that people misunderstand the message. "

DD