Karina Niebla
08/22/2020 - 20:05
- Clarín.com
- Cities
Flores continues to be the neighborhood with the most accumulated cases of coronavirus in the City of Buenos Aires in this last week. Villa Soldati was the one that registered the most positives by number of inhabitants and Agronomy where the rate of infections was higher. But sanitary wallets look at the general postcard and the curve over time, more than the daily or weekly photograph. That is why they decided to return with DetectAr to the formal neighborhoods that saw it debut in June: Balvanera, Almagro and Palermo .
It is that these three neighborhoods, without being first in the rankings of the last week, also show a high activity of cases . In fact, Balvanera and Palermo are third and fifth in number of accumulated positives. And Almagro in a not reassuring eighth. This is indicated by the Buenos Aires Weekly Epidemiological Bulletin this Friday.
This activity becomes even more forceful when you look at it from a distance and a little further back in time. Thus, it is evident that in the last four weeks Almagro and Balvanera saw cases increase by 68.4% and 61.8% respectively in that period, values higher than the general Buenos Aires growth of 59.6%. The rise in Palermo is even more significant: in that period, their infections increased by 91% . In these neighborhoods, the R or contagiousness rate far exceeds the average 0.95, which, according to the Buenos Aires Ministry of Health, is registered in the City.
The last week was not positive for Balvanera and Palermo: they were the two neighborhoods that pushed the contagion curve the most up in the City, being the ones that registered the most new cases .
Coronavirus in CABA
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Source: GCBA Infographic: Clarín
“In the DetectAr that we do for the neighborhoods, we are already covering the surface where 87% of all the cases in the City are. We have 13% very dispersed in areas of very low density, for which it does not make sense to put a device, there we can manage ourselves in health centers. So we started the second round in areas that still have many infections, especially in areas with many collective dwellings ”, explains Gabriel Battistella, undersecretary of Primary, Ambulatory and Community Care of the Ministry of Health of the City.
Once you arrive in a neighborhood, the DetectAr plan continues to operate even if your health mobile moves to another area. Therefore, the return of the program means a reinforcement in the most conflictive neighborhoods.
This Saturday, DetectAr returned with full force to Balvanera , where "there are 160 tenancies and collective houses and the disease is highly concentrated ," the official says. The starting point was two blocks from that neighborhood, at Primary No. 17 Luis José Chorroarín, located at Carlos Calvo 2827, San Cristóbal.
In Balvanera the virus spreads especially in the tenants. Photo: Guillermo Rodríguez Adami
In Balvanera the operation will continue until Tuesday inclusive. On Wednesday they will return to Almagro , starting at the Santiago de Liniers School of Commerce No. 25, at 4261 Corrientes Avenue. They will stay in that neighborhood until Saturday included. From Sunday 30 to Wednesday 2 they will be in Palermo , based at the Coronel Genaro Berón de Astrada Common Primary School No. 9, in El Salvador 4037, in front of the Unidad Latinoamericana square.
"In all the places where we are doing this second round, the operation was not deactivated, but there were active search devices with which we went house to house and, if we detected a suspicious case, we took the person to get swabbed at the Balvanera headquarters ”, Clarifies Battistella. And he highlights that they have been carrying out "the saliva test in cohabitants of contacts for three weeks."
From Sunday 30 to Wednesday 2 the DetectAr operation will return to Palermo. Photo: Guillermo Rodríguez Adami
The DetectAr program, which combines active search for cases and follow-up of close contacts, is carried out in the City by the national and Buenos Aires governments. Through this plan, 56,214 people have already been tested and 20,484 positive for coronavirus have been confirmed , they indicate from the City Ministry of Health.
This general positivity index, of 36%, varies not only from one neighborhood to another but within each one. This is how in the areas where DetectAr returns these days, the positivity rate is between 35 and 40% in group homes, but it drops to between 20 and 25% in homes where there is no overcrowding, Battistella points out.
Avellaneda Avenue, in Flores, the neighborhood with the most absolute cases. Photo: Germán García Adrasti
In absolute cases, it follows the trend of Flores and Villa Lugano in first and second place, with 7,275 and 5,799 positives respectively. In infections per 100,000 inhabitants, Villa Soldati and Retiro remain at the top of the list, where the rate of increase in infections is the lowest in the City. And the acceleration in the rate of growth of infected continues to be concentrated in the northwest and east of Buenos Aires: Agronomía, Villa Ortúzar, Villa del Parque, Villa Santa Rita and Villa Luro.
This Friday 1,167 new cases of coronavirus were registered in residents of the City, 74 of them in popular neighborhoods. Then there were 82,935 positive accumulated among Buenos Aires residents and 1,998 deaths. The average age of death is around 76 years, with high blood pressure, chronic neurological diseases and diabetes as the most frequent pre-existing conditions.
NS