07/24/2020 - 8:42
- Clarín.com
- Society
The sharp increase in coronavirus cases in recent days revealed something that the Nation's own Minister of Health, Ginés González García, admitted: that the last strict quarantine did not have the desired effects. The national official went further and spoke of the lack of responsibility of some people.
This Friday, in the City's health report, the Buenos Aires Minister of Health, Fernán Quirós, avoided talking about "those responsible," although he was clear in stating that there is part of society that does not comply with protocols to prevent the spread of virus.
"It is not looking for culprits or saying where the problem is, but epidemiological investigations indicate that there are people who are crossing families, making social gatherings in closed places and that is not convenient. That adds risks," he assured.
The official admitted that "there is one obvious thing and that is that people are very tired and there are many people who cannot comply with the quarantine," but he insisted on the risk that close meetings and encounters entail.
"We have to avoid as much as possible the crossings of families, friends, acquaintances, in closed places because they are very risky. What is happening to us is that part of the citizenry cannot sustain the idea that they cannot visit a friend, a family member or a neighbor. This is not the way to find guilty, this is cooperating, "he stressed.
"We are all responsible," said the minister in the same tone, although he admitted that "each one is doing what he can at each stage."
Consulted by the hard numbers of the city and the increase of cases in the last days, Quirós insisted on observing the doubling time of cases that occurs every 32 days and the R that is currently at 1.05 .
In addition, he stopped in the analysis of this week's numbers and explained: "If we see the graph neglecting the last three days, the weekend was very low case activity; the four days after the long weekend was higher the number of cases and there are two or three days that it starts to drop again. " And he admitted: " It is not very clear why this happened. We will continue to see the cases day by day to make a good diagnosis of what happened".
Regarding these numbers, he analyzed that what happens today are "the effects of the latest intensification of the quarantine" and that "means that the curve of cases remains relatively on the same slope as it came."
Quirós also referred to the case fatality rate in the City, which is currently 2.08%, and explained that "to know the real case fatality rate, you have to wait for the curve to be completed."
And he added: "The case fatality rates are always getting worse in the last part of the epidemic because when the contagions drop, the deceased continue to occur. Therefore, it is expected that the case fatality rate will be slightly higher than what we are reporting in these days".
Occupancy of intensive care beds
"Every day that passes there are more cases and the health system is a little more strained," Quirós acknowledged when asked about the occupation of intensive care beds in the City of Buenos Aires.
For this, he explained that the system they use is a census that "is not a representative sample, it is the totality, it is counted one by one every day, in the public and private sector." He added: "That number is not debatable. There is no statistical sampling strategy that can be more exact than a census of the number of beds ."
"278 of the 450 intensive care beds in the public sector are occupied. The private sector reported 74% of occupancy on Thursday, they have 600 beds dedicated to Covid-19," Quirós specified.
Then he marked how the occupation in both the private and public sectors evolved in terms of care for patients with coronavirus: "In the last 10 days the private sector has been increasing the number of cases it has to attend to. At first, the relationship with the public sector was 70 to 30, then it became 60 to 40 and today we are at 50 and 50 ".
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