02/20/2021 17:29
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 02/20/2021 5:37 PM
While the scandal over the priority vaccination of those close to the national government continues, the Ministry of Health of the Nation reported this Saturday
another 122 deaths and 5,944 new cases
of coronavirus.
In this way, Argentina has recorded 51,122 fatalities and 2,060,625 infections since the beginning of the pandemic, figures that keep the country among the 13 with the most deaths and among the 12 with the most infected.
Of the 148,070 people who are suffering from the disease, 3,605 remain hospitalized in Intensive Care Units (ICU), whose bed occupancy level is 59.3% in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires (AMBA) and 54.2% in the rest of the country.
In the last hours, 45,223 tests were carried out, with a
positivity of 13.1%
.
Since the beginning of the outbreak, 7,106,842 diagnostic tests for this disease have been performed, which is equivalent to 157,929 samples per million inhabitants.
According to official information, the impact of tourism due to the summer season on infections
was much lower than expected,
since the average number of new cases nationwide went from 11,530 daily in mid-January to 5,493 this week, with a decrease of 53%.
"The situation was controlled. Beyond the photos that were seen in a particular beach or spa, in general the people who came as tourists and those of us who live here understood that we had to continue to respect the protocols if we wanted to go through the season fairly calmly" ,
Viviana Bernabei, Secretary of Health of General Pueyrredón
, told
Télam
.
Bernabei pointed out that between January 6 and 8, Mar del Plata exceeded 300 new cases per day for the first time since October 21, the day that marked the maximum number of notifications since the start of the pandemic.
"After that,
it stabilized in a number of infections
that for us was still high -with 200 and 250 per day-, because if there was an outbreak we would be complicated. But that outbreak did not occur, the situation was under control. There were only two days with an alert regarding hospitalizations in critical care, but at no time did we become complicated regarding hospitalizations, "the official explained.
He also argued that after the stabilization of cases,
"the positivity rate began to drop"
, which in the first week of January had been 45 percent, and during the rest of the season it ranged between 31 and 35 percent. .
Another way to measure the impact of the tourist movement is the test carried out by the city of Buenos Aires on those who return from vacation, which until Friday reported 620,231 tests, of which 11,407 were positive, with a positive rate
of the last 7 0.99% days.
The evolution of positives in Mar del Plata and Pinamar is a sample of what happened on the Atlantic Coast and also in almost the entire country, where cases nationwide began to decline at a rate of 14 percent weekly since reached a maximum average of daily notifications the week of January 14 with 11,530 patients with Covid.
Since then, the national average of daily notifications has declined steadily.
"The week of January 21 was 10,337 cases; the week of January 28, 8,921; that of February 4, 8,016; that of February 11, 6,673 and this week was 5,493", explained to
Télam
the teacher and researcher Soledad Retamar.
Finally, Gabriel Battistella, undersecretary of Primary, Ambulatory and Community Care of the City.
He pointed out that "the strong impact of the increase in cases was in the first two weeks of January, after the holidays and end-of-year meetings, then, although the risk was higher among those who vacationed, the situation did not overflow; Maybe that increase at the beginning of the year scared a little and people took care of themselves again, it also accompanied the testing when they returned from vacation. "
