Irene Hartmann
12/14/2020 8:13 PM
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 12/14/2020 8:17 PM
The
one and a half million people with
coronavirus that reached Argentina this Monday is the tip of a cold and hindering iceberg, whose building we have seen rise in front of our noses in the last nine months.
What we did not notice was happening, quietly, below: a second mass that today raises the
real number of infected
about
seven times
higher than the official one.
Based on the IFR (the acronym in English for the “fatality infection index”), experts who follow the statistical detail of the Covid estimate that at least
25%
of the population, that is,
1 in 4 Argentines, had or has coronavirus
.
The forcefulness that - against the million and a half documented - no less than a quarter of the inhabitants of the national territory, that is,
more than 11 million people
, contracted an ungovernable virus that, closing 2020, has to mistreat the main countries of the world, is reason enough to lower the local index of arrogance and assume that it is urgent to prevent the second wave.
In addition, counting only the one and a half million "official",
Argentina is the country with the most infected per million inhabitants of South America and the second in Latin America
, behind Panama, according to
Worldmeters
.
A health worker performs a swab on a possible coronavirus patient.
/ Dpa
With such large numbers, the lessons are few and clear: 1) The politicization of the pandemic is sterile in the face of the force of more than 40,000 deaths.
2) Indoor meetings are contagious.
3) Hand hygiene and social distancing are central.
4) The chinstrap under the nose is ridiculous.
5) The vaccine will not work magic.
6) Test little blinds.
Those who shared the fine print of the
under-registered infected
were Conicet researchers
Rodrigo Quiroga
, doctor in Chemistry, specialized in Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics from the UNC, and
Guillermo Durán
, doctor in Computer Science specialized in applied mathematics and director of the Institute of Calculations of the Faculty of Exact Sciences of the UBA.
How do you explain that while we feel “we are better” in terms of contagion, the curve seems at times
flat
or even rising?
According to Quiroga, “there is a brake on the abrupt drop in cases that occurred after the peak, which generates a certain amount of smoothing.
But it is not generalized.
It is not the same throughout the country ”.
v 1.5
Coronavirus in Argentina
Tap to explore the data
Source:
Ministry of Health - Johns Hopkins University
Infographic:
Clarín
In jurisdictions such as the city of Buenos Aires, Chubut, Entre Ríos, La Pampa, Neuquén, Río Negro, San Juan and Santa Fe, “the cases have been almost stable for almost a month, always looking at the daily average of the last seven days ”, He added.
On the other hand, he warned, there are provinces that
did not pass the first wave
: "They are jurisdictions that never directly lowered infections. This is the case of
Chaco, Misiones and Santa Cruz
."
Balance
As the future is in time to be written, it may be useful to remember where we have failed so far.
Does anyone remember the little hype of
positivity
?
In November we managed to drop from more than 60% of positive tests, to 29% (weekly average), after the load of negative tests rejected until that moment (which gave an absurdly high positivity) was ordered in many provinces.
But, even with 29% positivity, Argentina is in position 115 in this item, worldwide;
that is,
among the countries that test the least
, according to
Worldmeters.
In other words, worse than regional peers like Chile, Uruguay and Brazil.
v 1.5
The countries of South America
with the highest rate of total infections
Tap to explore the data
Source:
Johns Hopkins University
Infographic:
Clarín
The same indicates the evaluation of
Our World in Data
, that English site that one day "banished" us from its world index, due to local failures in the load of tests, and that now takes us back into account.
But for them we are in "red" for having a positivity above 20%.
Maybe it's a goal to pursue.
The positivity recommended by the WHO is still
10%
.
And it must be said that neither before nor now does it draw attention to know of people who, with certain symptoms of Covid, fail in the attempt to be tested in national devices such as "
DetectAr
".
Or because it is not reported that on weekends and holidays only some posts work ... Or because it is not clarified that only a limited number of daily samples are collected.
Far from the flock
25% of the population with coronavirus is a percentage far from the so-called “
herd immunity
”.
According to Guillermo Durán, “the estimate indicates that in the city of Buenos Aires a little more than
38%
of the people
were infected
.
In Buenos Aires,
34%
.
That is why cases are decreasing, since the virus has less space to 'run' through.
However, these percentages are far from herd immunity, calculated at
70%
.
It was only there that no one else was contagious ”.
For Quiroga, “although it is estimated that 25% of the population was infected, it does not guarantee that cases will not rise again.
In some regions of Brazil or Bolivia, we estimate a higher proportion of infected and the cases increased.
It also happened in Paraguay, Chile, Colombia, Uruguay.
Social behavior is key ”.
The restless will like to understand that the calculation that these experts make of the number of "real" infected is based on an indicator, the IFR or
Infection Fatality Ratio,
which
determines a number of infected behind each deceased by Covid.
They take the calculated in
Spain
.
The long weekend of December 8, in Mar del Plata, with controls to avoid coronavirus infections.
/ Télam
Why the one in that country?
After the first cataract of deaths that occurred in Europe, several countries carried out massive serological tests with which it was possible to specify
the data of infected behind each death by coronavirus.
Not so long ago, a paper (in
Nature
) by researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Pasteur Institute (“
Age-specific mortality and immunity patterns of SARS-CoV-2
”), which collected data from 44 countries and 22 studies from seroprevalence, put the IFR of Spain “more or less in the middle”, explained Quiroga, to justify that choice.
Now, while the province of Buenos Aires has 9.68 actual infected for each detected and the city of Buenos Aires, 7.41, there are provinces in which the figure
far exceeds the national average of 8.29
.
This is the case of
Chaco
, where the infected / cases ratio is 14;
Jujuy
, with 17.43;
La
Rioja
, with almost 18;
Jump
, with almost 23.
The explanation could be that "the health system was surely
saturated,
" Durán evaluated.
Because, “no matter how little it has been tested, they are too high figures.
One presumes that there is another variable in between.
Possibly, that the deceased / infected relationship was altered, since
people died who, with a health system working well, might not have died
”.
The figures are tedious, but they serve to anticipate and improve what could come.
As Quiroga explained, “the conclusion that we have been detecting only a percentage of the real infected is that
many people became infected and infected others without knowing it
.
We must emphasize the importance of care even if one feels well: symptomatic patients have the peak of contagion before they have signs.
And many people have no symptoms and are contagious. "
In short, he concluded: "In summer, sunlight deactivates the virus earlier and people gather more in the open air, but you have to space the meetings for about five days and not see thousands of different people. Neither the vaccine nor the summer They will do magic. It's up to us. "
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