Karina Niebla
07/19/2020 - 7:00
- Clarín.com
- Cities
They are the eve of another relaxed quarantine and the Buenos Aires curve of coronavirus cases gives more and more signs of stabilizing. The rate of contagion fell 30% in the last week and the neighborhoods hardest hit in these three months are the ones with the least positive increases they had since July began.
Just over 17%. That was the increase in cases of Covid-19 in Buenos Aires neighbors in the last week, according to the latest Epidemiological Weekly Bulletin of the City's Ministry of Health. To know what that number means, you have to put it in context: between the end of June and the first week of July, that value had hovered around 24% and had not shown signs of falling. It can be seen then that it was in the last week that there was a more significant slowdown in the rate of infection , something that had also been registered in mid-June but to a much lesser extent.
In addition to an increasingly stable curve, there is another reason to be optimistic: the neighborhoods that accumulate the most cases are now the ones that multiply the slowest. It is true: Retiro, Flores and Barracas continue to be in the top 5 in numbers of infections. But it is also true that their positives increased by 3%, 9% and 11% respectively , much less than the Buenos Aires average and only a small fraction compared to neighborhoods that exceed a 30% increase.
The latter are Villa Ortúzar, Núñez and Liniers . It was there where contagions increased the most this week and at the same time where there were fewer accumulated positives. In absolute number of cases, these three neighborhoods represent just 2% of the total Buenos Aires. But it is justified to follow their evolution closely: the three increased cases by 38%, 35% and 32% respectively, well above the general percentage of the City.
Coronavirus at CABA
SITUATION IN THE MOST VULNERABLE NEIGHBORHOODS
Source: GCBA Infographic: Clarín
Another neighborhood to pay attention to is Villa Lugano: it rose several places in the ranking of infections and for the first time is in second place, while only two weeks ago it was sixth. Most of his positives come from residents of Villa 20 and Ciudad Oculta (Villa 15), where the DetectAr operation was installed in May to actively search for cases and trace close contacts.
Hidden City, in Villa Lugano, the neighborhood that is second in the ranking of infections. Photo: Mario Quinteros
But not all is bad news for this neighborhood in the south-west of Buenos Aires: its positive curve is declining . In fact, in the last seven days their cases grew by 13.5%, when two weeks ago the increase had been 45%.
All in all, there are neighborhoods where this curve has not yet stabilized and was always upward, although in each one the outlook is different: it is not the same to accelerate the increase in cases in areas that are already highly affected, than in the who exhibit relatively few infections.
One of the neighborhoods where this curve should be most worrying is Balvanera: its absolute positives add up to 7% of the total of Buenos Aires , a high percentage compared to that of most neighborhoods. In fact, it is among the ten most affected by Capital if the absolute number of cases is related to that of its inhabitants.
The DetectAr operation in Balvanera, the neighborhood that concentrates 7% of the City's coronavirus cases.
You also have to keep a close eye on Palermo : in addition to its ever- increasing curve , it is among the ten that raised it the most in the last week. In addition, it is seventh in the number of positives, although its large population makes the impact relatively less. Belgrano also continues with sustained growth of cases (it is fourth in that parameter), as does Caballito , which also appears among the ten Buenos Aires neighborhoods with the most infections.
This Friday, 1,051 new cases of coronavirus were registered in residents of the City, 151 of them in popular neighborhoods. Then they added 43,066 the accumulated positives among Buenos Aires neighbors and 845 deaths. The average age of death is 75 years, with high blood pressure, diabetes and chronic neurological diseases as the most frequent pre-existing conditions.
NS