Irene Hartmann
08/16/2021 12:09 PM
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 08/16/2021 12:09
Several weeks ago,
Clarín was
interviewing Roberto Debbag - president-elect of the Latin American Society of Pediatric Infectology - for another note about Covid, when the doctor surprised with this statement: he said that today
there is more than one pandemic
.
Specifically,
three
.
How is Argentina located in this scenario?
Debbag clarified that the pandemic progresses according to
three different patterns or models
: “On the one hand, that of the United States, a pandemic of the reluctant to be vaccinated (with full availability of doses, only half have the complete scheme).
Then there is the European pandemic.
We can take the United Kingdom or another country as an example and it will be seen that it is a
mixed form
between not vaccinated or incompletely vaccinated, and vaccinated with two doses ”.
In Argentina and Latin America “there seems to be a third type of pandemic, where
the population that is not vaccinated or that has only one dose
is much higher than that which is covered.
The doses in these countries arrived with much more delay, which also generated very high numbers of hospitalizations and deaths ”.
The chat with Debbag was a few weeks ago.
Since then, vaccination in Argentina has
rebounded
, although it must be said that about
40% of those over
60 years
of age still do not have the complete schedule
.
Medical personnel work in an Intensive Therapy unit with Covid patients, in Buenos Aires.
Photo: EFE
Vaccines, seen in this way, are an asset whose
supply and demand
are tracing very dissimilar health trails in the world.
Balance
Clarín
asked Santiago Neme, a young doctor from Tucumán who has lived in the United States for two decades, for his vision of the pandemic models and the local situation.
Neme is a specialist in infectious diseases and a master's degree in public health, in addition to being the head of the UW Medical Center – Northwest, in Seattle, one of the hospitals where the first cases of Covid arrived and where the
first diagnostic tests for
the virus were born.
In agreement with Debbag, he said that “the pandemic has different 'flavors', depending on the
access and acceptance of vaccines
.
The United States is fortunate to have a large supply, but also the great problem that many do not want to be vaccinated.
More than
98% of the cases
we see are people
not vaccinated with a dose
”.
In the United States "the model is one of high
supply and low demand
for vaccines. In developing countries, what exists is a supply problem. And in Europe it varies depending on the country. There are different challenges, but
the problem is common to all
”, he summed up.
In Godoy Cruz, Mendoza, vaccination against Covid-19, Photo: Los Andes
Although in Argentina the increasing
arrival of doses
is reassuring, the
parsimony
with which this process took place represented such a cost (almost 110,000 deaths, at the end of this note) that there are no adequate words to express it.
Could that delay be repeated if the Covid vaccine is included in the mandatory annual calendar?
The world understood that
managing the times, in epidemiological matters, is key.
For something, the World Health Organization (WHO) has been emphasizing the problem of
inequity in global access to vaccines
, in a world in which mobility can move a pandemic from one end of the globe to the other, in just hours .
For Neme, the scenario is almost irrational: no matter how much the vaccination campaign has improved, "there (
in Argentina
) they still await second doses and here (
in the United States
) they are already thinking of a third. But most of the world does not he even has the first injection. "
It doesn't sound good if it's like Debbag says: "We are entering a
pandemic era
."
For this reason, according to Neme, "
it was never more important to get vaccinated
. As soon as possible, with a complete schedule and with the vaccine that is available."
Aerosol sprays
Perhaps thousands of deaths would have been avoided if scientists like
José Luis Jiménez
had played an influential role in the global management of the pandemic.
Jimenez is a chemist, a researcher at the University of Colorado, United States, and one of the experts who anticipated the key role of the airborne transmission of Covid through particles called
aerosols
.
He was also one of the founders of the Aireamos group (whose local representative is the physicist Jorge Aliaga), which among other aspects promotes the use
of carbon dioxide (CO2) sensors
in closed environments, to warn if the air is “cloudy ”, Which would promote contagion.
A Buenos Aires bar in Palermo, when the capacity of 25% of the capacity was enabled.
Photo: Juano Tesone
“It seems to me very correct to observe differences subject to the availability of vaccines and their degree of acceptance between countries.
This, of course,
conditions
the situation of each place ”, he evaluated.
However, he clarified: “This is not static and it will continue to change if there are still very strong waves such as the
Delta variant
.
In countries like the United States there are many people who did not get vaccinated because the vaccines were new and they were scared.
But as autumn and winter come,
I think they are going to get vaccinated and only the
anti-vaccines will
remain
”.
From Argentina, Jiménez bet that "over time there will be greater availability of vaccines."
But, although he remarked that "of course vaccination is the most important variable," he clarified that "it is not the only one."
"As long as we are not all vaccinated and variants that are transmitted like Delta emerge -more others that evade vaccines even more-, we must
continue to pay attention to transmission,
" he stressed.
Use of chinstrap outdoors in the summer of Buenos Aires 2021. Photo Fernando de la Orden
“It all depends on the measures that are adopted.
Countries that maintain the
use of chinstraps
or improve them, or improve ventilation, or measure CO2, or do nothing.
All of that will make a difference, ”he warned.
And he closed with an eloquent example: “Belgium decided that restaurants, bars, gyms and theaters, which are high-risk sites, have a public carbon dioxide measure, if they want to be open.
They must be under a certain limit, or they will be penalized.
They are doing it seriously.
Other places don't dare ”.
MG / PS
Look also
"Darwinian evolution": how Covid reproduces in the body and why new variants appear
The lack of nurses, another problem in the vaccination plan in the Province: there are already municipalities where first doses are not applied