Pablo Sigal
10/21/2020 10:26 AM
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 10/21/2020 10:27 AM
How many deaths are there from coronavirus in Argentina?
How many tests are done in the country?
How many patients have undergone intensive therapy before dying since the pandemic began?
After
nearly eight months
since the first infected from Italy was recorded, and exceeded one million infections, some data
are still unknown.
Clarín was
able to confirm that according to the database of the Argentine Integrated Health Information System (SISA)
, only 10,484 patients have been loaded into the column "intensive therapy"
, one of the 24 that make up the form.
Of that number, 6,138 died and 4,363 did not.
At the time of reviewing the database, the country had
26,716 deaths.
The difference in deaths that is not registered in intensive care is
20,578.
Were they interned?
Did they come to a UTI?
It is not really known.
According to official records,
only 23 percent of the dead
were admitted to a highly complex unit.
Experts consulted by
Clarín
affirm that what by common sense anyone could intuit: it is too low a number and there would be an under-registration, as there was already with the dead and as it would also be happening with the tests.
There are no very accurate answers.
Government sources provided
a relieving fact
: day-to-day decisions do not depend on the SISA, whose information is subject to what each public and private health provider in each province charges.
"There is a parallel registry in which the number of patients admitted to intensive care is reported in real time," they explained.
With this data,
the percentage of availability of beds
is reported in each daily section
, both in the AMBA and in the Interior.
However, both this information and that of the tests, and much more the deaths, are indispensable from the historical statistical point of view
to evaluate Argentina's performance
in the coronavirus pandemic.
Tests and beds are the investment;
deaths, the most palpable result of the management.
That is, it is known how many patients are in intensive care today, but not
how many there have been since March.
The dead have already been reported on an under-registration, part of which
the province of Buenos Aires settled last month
and now it would be "up to date."
But the same did not happen with other districts, so even today it is impossible to know the real number of deaths from coronavirus throughout the country.
Daniel Gollán, Buenos Aires Minister of Health, said that he had perfected the SISA and offered his system to other provinces.
The lack of credibility in the Argentine data led to this Tuesday the prestigious site Our world in data, from the University of Oxford, deciding to stop providing information about the tests carried out in Argentina.
The problem, as recognized by the Government itself, would be that
many health care providers do not upload
negative tests to
the SISA
.
This, if true, would be causing an increase in the rate of positivity and, at the same time, an under-registration of tests.
In the Government they
know that they have a problem with the data
on the pandemic, a weak point that plays against them: both when it is “discovered” that the deaths from Covid are more than those reported and when the number of tests is underestimated .
They affirm that if the number of swabs were correctly loaded into the system,
the country would show a better performance in that item.
From the Executive Power they speak of this delay in the loading of data and attribute it to
fatigue and the scarce resources that health centers have
, overwhelmed by infections.
A scenario that would prevent them from loading every piece of data into the system.
In the case of the demand for intensive therapies, however, the gap between the official figure and common sense is too wide.
Clarín
consulted provincial health ministries on this issue.
The data provided by the province of Buenos Aires on intensive therapies is key to contrast the national under-registration.
According to sources from the district's Ministry of Health, "
83 percent
of the Buenos Aires dead were admitted to intensive care."
The district recorded
15,934 deaths as of
Monday
.
Some provinces claim to be up to date on cargo and others admit delays.
The problem with the Excel column of the SISA of intensive therapies, rather than a delay, already seems to result in
something systemic
, since that data is not recorded in more than 20 thousand deaths.
The explanation given in Entre Ríos would depict the scenario: “All the data should be loaded, but as this is something systemic but in the hands of living beings, things happen that are currently under permanent analysis.
The exponential increase in cases
punctuates the human response
due to the scarcity and fatigue of overwhelmed doctors.
In short, the excess demand passed everything by ".
International statistics indicate that
5 percent of
positive coronavirus
cases
reach ICUs.
Based on this criterion, in Argentina there should have been
50,133 patients with this condition so far
.
But according to the registered figures and the deficit that prevents having accurate data, the proportion has been barely 1 percent.
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