Guido Carelli Lynch
10/30/2020 16:30
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 10/30/2020 16:30
The rates of coronavirus infections in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area (AMBA)
continue to decline sharply
.
In the City the curve continues to fall since the last week of August, when an average of more than 1,300 cases per day were registered.
In the last 7 days there was an average of "just" 500 confirmed cases per day.
Positivity was also reduced and testing increased.
However, despite the good news, the Capital registered an
increase in the death rate per million inhabitants
in recent weeks
due to the
deferred burden
of deaths corresponding to the previous months.
Unlike the Province, which on September 25 corrected 3,523 more deaths in a single movement than those recorded in official records;
the Buenos Aires district decided not to copy the database integration model proposed by the Buenos Aires authorities and to bet on the work of the team of
100 technicians
who attend hospitals, clinics and public and private laboratories to load them with deaths, positive and negative cases in the
Integrated Argentine Health Information System
(SISA).
The corrections were gradual and the City denies that "the trickle" was deliberate.
"Many people are involved," they argue.
As of September 23, the City had confirmed 851 deaths corresponding to July.
In the last month, 442 deaths were gradually added by Covid that had not been counted during the course of the month in question and were uploaded with posterity.
The increase represented almost 42%.
The data, which are publicly accessible, were disclosed by biochemist Santiago Olszevicki on Twitter and they soon went viral.
With delay,
347 deaths
were also added
to the 912 deaths
in August that had been reported until last month.
So far the correction of the two months added
749 names to the list of deceased
.
Official sources of the City Government assure that there
could be new corrections,
but they maintain that
they would not be of the magnitude
of the percentages that were added now.
Infectologists on the committee advising Governor Axel Kicillof estimated twice the number of cases the City "whitewashed" now.
Weeks ago, the Buenos Aires Minister of Health
Fernán Quirós
acknowledged that there could be some delay in the loading, but the Buenos Aires government ruled out that there was an
omission of 1500 deaths
, the number calculated -with mathematical projections- by the epidemiological advisor of the Buenos Aires governor,
Guillermo Duran
.
On October 6, the City counted 3,921 deaths from Covid.
According to the updated report that Quirós presented to the press this Friday, the Capital reached
5,095 deaths
.
86 percent of them were older than 60 years.
The
fatality per million inhabitants
climbed to 3.2%.
“The City works permanently to optimize the loading of data related to COVID-19 with the aim of keeping it as updated as possible in SISA.
Along these lines, it has a team of around 100 people specially destined for the task that has managed to significantly reduce processing times, ”the City's Health Ministry officially reported to
Clarín's
query
.
In the Buenos Aires opposition they have doubts.
The block of legislators from the Frente de Todos presented a request for information and a bill to urge the City to use the same methodology as the Province to calculate the number of deaths from Covid, but it was never dealt with on site.
“The passage of time corroborated what we said when we presented the project so that the same system as in the Province is used.
The
underreporting of deaths from covid was very high
.
The only hypothesis that occurs to me is that the visibility of the increase in the number of cases collided with the
opening strategy
that Larreta was carrying out, ”said
Matías Barroetaveña
, one of the authors of the project.
The under-registration of deaths in the two jurisdictions caused crossings between leaders of Juntos por el Cambio and the Frente de Todos. "Having the death toll in real time is a historical problem in the whole world in a pandemic. In the Province, we were able to solve it and surely CABA will also solve it", said the Buenos Aires Minister of Health
Daniel Gollan
. Former Minister and Secretary of Health of Mauricio Macri,
Adolfo Rubinstein
, had described as "inadmissible" the update of 3,523 deaths in the Province. The crosses between the two jurisdictions for the health strategy do not stop, although the pandemic is now concentrated in the rest of the provinces.