Emilia vexler
06/29/2021 3:37 PM
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 06/29/2021 4:00 PM
There are curves.
Simulations
Mathematical calculations.
A range of hard data that, to date, with this social behavior and this level of vaccination, point to the peak of
a third wave in October
in Argentina.
Or, earlier, in September, if care continues to decline and reopening is on the rise.
All for the
Delta variant
.
The hot spot, precisely, are the restrictions at the Ezeiza Airport, which seek to prevent a
dangerously more contagious version
of the coronavirus that we already know
does not continue to enter
.
600 instead of 2,000 are the people who can enter the country every 24 hours.
Until July 9 and probably afterwards as well.
Among so many numbers - and among all the commotion for those who, with everything already paid, went on vacation or an imported puncture - there is a metaphor, simple but flammable, that explains why it would be relevant to lower the number of seats occupied in a car. airplane.
And why, at the same time,
it is not enough
.
How does it change that 600 enters instead of 2,000?
How do you stop or delay Delta's entry if hotel isolation is almost "optional" or "selective" depending on the jurisdiction?
Imagine it as gasoline and fire.
This is how
Jorge Aliaga, physicist, researcher at Conicet and former dean of the Exact Faculty of the UBA
explains it to
Clarín
.
If there is a certain probability that some people enter through Ezeiza infected with the Delta variant or, as in this metaphor, with
a can of gasoline
, and three or more times more people are allowed to enter (the ratio between 600 and 2,000 passengers) ,
increases three times or more the probability
that someone enters with that can of gasoline and sets the contagion curve in the country on fire.
A worker disinfects chairs in a waiting room at the Ezeiza International Airport.
Photo: EFE
The image is clear.
Burning
Because, as this number expert says, "that scales exponentially."
So why
is it not enough to
stop the arrival of the "drums"?
"The only sense it has (to restrict to 600) is that
it delays the time
it takes for the cases to explode with the Delta variant. As this competes with the fact that Argentina is vaccinating, it makes you gain a few weeks in advancing with the vaccination with one and two doses.
You put less gasoline to the fire
if fewer infected people enter ", he points out. The fire, Delta's community circulation, is more fact than doubt. That is why it asks that, beyond the restrictions, the
isolation control
be complied with
.
To mark the obstacles to isolation, the physicist recalls that the Supreme Court decided that in Formosa no one could be isolated upon entering that province if they had a negative PCR.
"That is what is wrong. Because the PCR
can give you negative today and be contagious tomorrow
. This is what this disease is like. That is why we are reaching 100,000 deaths," he closes.
For Roberto Debbag, the vice president of the Latin American Society of Pediatric Infectology, the limit of 600 passengers
does not reach
if you think about it from science.
"It is a measure that lacks scientific evidence. Every person who enters a country, in an industrialized country, must have a PCR, which gives a response after two or three hours and, if it is positive, health policy is decided there. Not before. Reduce flights when we have
a totally permeable land border
, when in neighboring countries the Delta is surely already circulating but it has not yet been found ... I really don't think there is a scientific answer from which to explain why ' 600 and not 2,000, '"he says.
The arrivals area of the Ezeiza International Airport.
Photo: EFE
From Twitter, Debbag raised the controversy among his colleagues because he proposed, instead of isolation in hotels, "PCR on all those who arrive and go home. At 2 hours, if they are positive, with their PCR their strict control is controlled isolation".
Rodrigo Quiroga is a biochemist, a CONICET researcher and an expert in bioinformatics data.
Therefore, before this note, he
was doing simulations
to respond.
The three keys that will determine how big the third wave will be for Delta, he says, are: the advance of vaccination, first - "which depends on
how many vaccines
will continue to arrive or if there is a percentage of the population that does not want to vaccinate "-;
second, "
how many people spread the Delta variant
in the country in the next two months";
and third, how much more contagious this variant is compared to those that are already circulating.
La Andina is today the majority in the country and then there is that of Manaus.
"As the vaccination seems that it will continue advancing, everything falls on those who spread the Delta variant and its contagiousness," he remarks.
All roads reach Ezeiza.
In the simulation of scenarios that Quiroga made, the photo is that if 8 people spread Delta per day in the country, there would be talk of a peak of infections greater than the one we had so far.
"More than 40,000 per day
.
"
But if a single person spreads Delta per day in the country, always according to the simulation, the maximum would be
8,000 daily cases
.
"Something much more manageable. That is why, only in that sense, the reduction from 2,000 to 600 passengers is reasonable, because you reduce the number of infecting people to a third. Beyond the isolation control, more important," marks the expert.
Province has already opted for hotels.
It remains to be seen if the City, in the coming days, will also do so.
That is why Quiroga remembers that the true limit for the Delta would be to leave it behind those
numbered rooms
.
"We know that it is difficult, we know that it generated problems, but we insist (he and the group of experts that raised the request to the Government) with isolation in hotels, it is essential. Because isolation at home is
not only not met and is difficult to control
, but there is intra-household contagion, the passengers infect those who are in the house, and no one isolates all the cohabitants. "
If there were isolation in hotels, would it be correct to let 2,000 people in instead of 600?
Quiroga says that it is impossible to answer this question.
"If there was a perfect control (in any jurisdiction)
, it could be any number of passengers
. Only with a 100% control and that nobody breaches the quarantine. But we know that this is impossible, so reducing the number of passengers seems the most prudent ", closes.
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