Coronavirus cases in the City: it is easier to get infected than in Rome or Madrid and it approaches New York and Rio de Janeiro

Pablo Sigal

07/24/2020 - 13:22

• Clarín.com
• Society

This calculation is made based on registered data. In reality, coronavirus cases are known to be almost ten times more than what is measured . But the comparison between cities is made with official figures. That said, the big surprise at this point in the pandemic is that in the city of Buenos Aires it is already easier to get coronaviruses than in Rome or Madrid.

Even when looking at one of the most affected areas in Italy, Lombardy, the situation is increasingly similar to that of the GBA in terms of the incidence of the coronavirus in the population. In other words, the number of cases per number of inhabitants is very similar .

It is clear that they are different times in the curve of each continent : in Europe the peak has passed and there is a greater number of recoveries, while in these latitudes there is still uncertainty about how far daily cases and deaths will skyrocket.

The big difference, however, is precisely  the number of deaths , where Argentina continues to record a case fatality level well below that of other countries. This has to do with the extensive quarantine that the AMBA fulfilled and suffered, which allowed the increase in cases to occur in a longer period of time and thus not saturate the hospitals.

Furthermore, the low lethality is also related to the fact that especially the most vulnerable population - the elderly - has been kept indoors. While the inhabitants who were exposed to Covid have an average age that leaves them less defenseless in the immune response.

In Madrid today, one out of every 90 inhabitants had a coronavirus and in Rome, one out of every 330. In the city of Buenos Aires, one out of every 59 . The degree of danger of contagion of the coronavirus in the City is rapidly approaching that experienced by New Yorkers and Cariocas . In New York, one in 37 people was infected and in Rio de Janeiro, one in 39.

Going to Lombardy, one of the areas of Italy most hit by the Covid, there one out of every 104 inhabitants suffered the infection. In the GBA, with a similar number of inhabitants, the proportion is so far one infected for every 144 people . Again, the big difference is in the dead: in that region of Italy alone there have already been 16,798 deaths .

Argentina is ranked twenty in the world in number of coronavirus cases. However, at the country level the incidence of Covid is below several in the South American region. Here is one infected for every 297 inhabitants . In Chile, for example, there is one every 53. In Peru, one every 86. In Colombia, one every 220. In Ecuador, one every 217.

In Europe, there are other countries that today are better than Argentina. France had one infected every 373 people and Germany, one every 404. Canada, one every 337 and Mexico, one every 436. The great difference  - which is what will count in the final balance - continues to be made by our country with the number of deaths accumulated.

Although the death toll has risen in recent days in Argentina and the daily average is currently above 100 , the current total of 2,722 still means a very low case fatality rate of 1.83 percent . The world rate is more than double , 4 percent.

The accelerated growth of infections in the AMBA area has two faces: on the one hand, the authorities believe that as more people are recovered from Covid, they will generate more antibodies so that what is known as "herd immunity" is reached . On the other hand, a lack of control of these daily figures can jeopardize the health system , if the drip of the infected becomes a cataract and is no longer manageable.

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