Adriana Santagati
04/28/2020 - 17:40
- Clarín.com
- Society
Guillermo Abel Gómez was 65 years old. On February 25 he returned from Paris; on March 7, he died of coronavirus at the Argerich hospital. He became the first victim of COVID-19 in the country. His death is recorded in the daily report on the virus on March 9, the fourth part since the government began to spread confirmed cases of the disease: until then there were 17 positives. From March 7, it took 38 days to reach the first 100 deaths from the virus, more than double the number that ran between victim 100 and today, when the morning part counted 197 deaths and we approached 200. Is this acceleration alarming?
On Saturday in his presentation to announce the new stage of quarantine, one of the central axes of the president's exposition was the doubling rate . Alberto Fernández explained that on March 20, when compulsory isolation was ordered, the doubling of infections occurred in 3.3 days, a figure that increased to 10.3 on April 12, when the measure was extended. As of April 25, that rate is 17.1, which shows that the famous “curve” is not shooting vertically but that this growth takes a more threatening form. The morning part of this Tuesday recorded 4,003 confirmed cases.
The first reading that could be made, looking at the absolute numbers, is that 14 days passed from April 14 , when the first 100 victims were confirmed, until April 28, when we approached the second hundred (a figure that could be confirmed in the evening part, following the projection of deaths of the last days). From 1 to 100 were 38 days .
“You don't have to just look at the absolute numbers. It is necessary to evaluate what percentage of deaths corresponds to the totals in each period. That 10 people die in a day today is 5%. But 14 days ago it was 10% ”, warns the infectologist Javier Farina, member of the Argentine Society of Infectious Diseases (SADI). And he chooses to explain it, as he says, in "grotesque numbers" so that it is understood. "If today we have 200 deceased and in a month 100 more die, it is a speed of 100 cases but a rate of 33%. If instead of having 200 I had a million and 100 die in a month, the absolute number is the same but the rate is very low . ”
In an interview this Monday with Clarín , Omar Sued, president of the Argentine Society of Infectious Diseases, referred to the case fatality rate , which in our country is around 4.5%. That data, he explained, “places us better or equal to the global situation. Better than the United States, than Italy, Spain, France and England ", but clarified that" it is not a question of money or of the health system only. There are questions of epidemiology, of maturity of the epidemic, of the moment in which the diagnoses are made and the amount that are made. There are so many other factors involved in understanding how much the actual case fatality rate is. ”
Now consulted on this evolution of the number of deaths, the expert again highlights the importance of this concept: “You have to look at the mortality rate, which has always remained below 5% . You can see how in Germany, for example, two weeks ago we used to say that it had the lowest mortality rate, and now it has 4% ”.
Sued also refers to the evolution of the epidemic . "It is normal for the first cases to take longer to reach 100 because the epidemic is maturing, it takes about a month for individuals to complicate and perish, and therefore now, after 100, you are seeing most of the people who were infected before, "he explains, and returns to the example of Germany: the case fatality rate rose there" because the epidemic matured. "
The key, in that maturation, is in the concept of the principle: stretch the doubling rate . "The same logic applies, and if the doubling rate is delayed, the number of deaths also", Farina closes.
ACE