Coronavirus: Costa Rica and its keys to being the most successful country in America in the fight against Covid-19

05/03/2020 - 13:18

• Clarín.com
• World

After almost two months of detecting the first coronavirus case, Costa Rica still has no community contagion, registers the lowest mortality rate in the Americas (0.81%), more recovered than active cases and has made scientific progress in the study and treatment of the virus.

Despite the good numbers and the decline in the virus curve, the authorities insist on the need to maintain strict hygienic and restrictive measures.

Here are the keys to Costa Rica for its good records, which include only 733 positive cases and 6 deaths as of this Saturday.

What is Coronavirus? How is it spread and what are its symptoms?

Despite the recurring political debate to guarantee the long-term sustainability of the Costa Rican Social Security Fund (CCSS), Costa Rica has one of the best health systems at the international level , according to specialized reports.

The universality of the system ensures that people have free access to COVID-19 evidence, as long as they meet the established parameters to consider someone as a suspicious case.

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In Costa Rica, a country of 5 million inhabitants, the public system has 29 hospitals, as well as clinics and a small health area for practically each neighborhood called Basic Equipment for Comprehensive Care (Ebais), which are the first step in the care of Health.

The Minister of Health, Daniel Salas, explained that this network has allowed daily personalized monitoring of COVID-19 patients and has also prevented the country from having community transmission of the virus, since practically all cases have their epidemiological link identified.

To deal with the pandemic, the CCSS set up a rehabilitation center to convert it into a 88-bed hospital dedicated exclusively to serving patients with COVID-19.

However, that hospital has been practically empty due to the few cases.

Strong and timely measures

As soon as it detected its first cases, in two American tourists, Costa Rica began to make decisions. The strongest is the closure of its borders for foreigners, a severe blow to the tourism sector , one of the engines of the country's economy and which predicts a 27% drop by 2020.

Costa Rica has not established a generalized quarantine, but it has ordered restrictions on the movement of vehicles, the closing of bars, discos, cinemas, gyms, and the operation with diminished capacity of restaurants, shops and other small businesses.

As of May 1 and due to the decrease in the curve of active cases, the Government has begun to reopen some activities such as gyms, beauty salons, mechanical workshops and cinemas with limitations.

The Health Minister, a 43-year-old doctor and expert in epidemiology, has become a figure with a direct speech that has permeated the population and that sometimes resembles a scolding.

"I need (need) them to react, please react!" , was one of the phrases of the minister that became more popular when Costa Rica was just beginning to face the pandemic and the authorities advocated staying home.

Salas has congratulated the population on several occasions for complying, for the most part, with prevention and restriction measures, although on Monday after Easter he expressed his displeasure at seeing many people on the streets.

The CCSS president, Román Macaya, has been another of the figures with his almost daily appearances at press conferences, and one of his most remembered phrases is "we prepare for the worst, for scenarios that nobody wants."

He released this phrase in early April when he confirmed that the entity had purchased 3,000 body bags.

The Clodomiro Picado Institute of the University of Costa Rica, created 50 years ago, specializes in the development of snake antivenoms that it exports to various countries in the world , and is applying this technique to create a serum to treat seriously ill patients with COVID -19.

The serum will be developed with plasma donated by recovered patients, since the body of these people generates an immunity (resistance) to the virus.

The state-run National Center for Biotechnological Innovations (CENIBIOT), which is conducting research that aims to develop its own tests to detect the coronavirus.

For its part, the state-run Costa Rican Institute for Research and Teaching in Nutrition and Health (Incense), managed for the first time in the country's history to sequence the genome of a human virus : that of SARS COV-2, which causes COVID-19 .

This advance will allow us to know if the virus has mutations over time, generate information that can be useful to develop vaccines, to know the dynamics and diversity of the viral population, the transmission routes in the country, among other uses.

Douglas Marín. EFE Agency