ranking of the best and worst provinces for tests, vaccines, infections and deaths

A recent ranking by the American company Bloomberg placed Argentina as the third country to have managed the pandemic the least, surpassed only by Poland and Brazil. Now, the internal borders, how was this management between the provinces? Who are those who had the best and the worst indicators until this moment?

There is no index that crosses different variables to give a Goal at the local level, but different indicators can be analyzed to put the magnifying glass on certain key points: infected, deceased, vaccinated, tests and health infrastructure.

A report prepared by the Alem Foundation – the organization for analyzing public issues of the Radical Civic Union – to which he had access Bugle decompose these different variables.

From the region to the interior

The report compares Argentine statistics with regional table. Argentina is third in number of cases (behind Panama and Brazil) and sixth in death (behind Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Panama and Colombia) and in tests (behind Chile, Uruguay, Panama, Peru, Colombia), still per 100,000 inhabitants.

The comparison also takes into account a economic variable: real gross domestic product, which fell in the 17 countries analyzed. Ours is the third where the decline was more pronounced (-10) behind Peru and Ecuador.

When we start to look at the situation in the provinces, the graphs show the disparity between the jurisdictions and also the great fragmentation of the health system. In Chaco, Formosa and Santiago del Estero, 6 out of 10 inhabitants benefit from exclusively public health coverage. In Patagonia, for its part, the minority has only public coverage: 24% in Santa Cruz, 29% in Tierra del Fuego and 33% in Chubut.

In Patagonia there are also several provinces which more money goes to health relative to its population. Taking per capita spending in 2017 and updating for inflation in 2021, Santa Cruz is investing $ 8,128, Tierra del Fuego, $ 6,711, and Chubut, $ 3,782.

The provinces that spend the least are Buenos Aires ($ 1,116), Misiones ($ 1,162) and Mendoza ($ 1,310). The capital is in the lot of the five with the most investment ($ 4908)

However, despite the resources in the health field, it is striking that Santa Cruz and Tierra del Fuego are among those who have fewer beds in relation to its population. Tierra del Fuego shares the first place in this negative ranking with San Luis (351 inhabitants per bed) and in Santa Cruz the ratio is 283 people per bed.

Focusing on the critical patient beds, the study found the number of intensive therapy beds for adults and pediatric patients and special care beds, which offer a higher level of complexity than a simple hospitalization to constantly monitor the patient without being a unit intensive care.

The province of Buenos Aires has 29.1% of these facilities nationwide, but the ratio is 25.75 beds per 100,000 inhabitants, which is less than the national average (34.26). However, there are provinces where the ratio of intensive care beds to their population is even lower.

In Tierra del Fuego, there are 15.76 beds per 100,000 inhabitants, in Misiones 17.26 and Entre Ríos, 20.59, according to a calculation made by Bugle based on the absolute number of beds in the report. Those with the greatest availability of this resource? In the capital, there are 97.54 beds per 100,000 inhabitants, in Neuquén, 61.86 and in Catamarca, 57.76.

Contagions, deaths and tests

In order for a patient to occupy a therapy bed, they must first have walked a path that begins with testing. It has been said since the start of the pandemic that Argentina is little tested. And there are districts that test much less than others.

The city of Buenos Aires is the first among those who test the most, with 61,882 tests per 100,000 inhabitants. Behind is San Luis, with 43,004 and Santa Cruz, with 33,270.

A paradigmatic case of the low number of tests is that of Misiones: only 3,881 per 100,000 inhabitants. Salta is another province that does not reach five figures: 7,590 were made per 100,000 inhabitants. San Juan, Jujuy and Entre Ríos narrowly exceed the 10,000 tests per 100,000 population mark (11,075, 11,006 and 10,134, respectively).

Regarding the province of Buenos Aires, although it concentrates the highest percentage of tests carried out in the country (31% of the total), if we compare it to its population, this indicator is below the national average (23,994): in the territory of Buenos Aires, 19,658 tests were carried out per 100,000 people.

The higher the number of tests, logically more positive cases will be detected. And in general, depending on the age and risk groups of those infected, there will be a percentage of those positives who eventually die.

CABA, which is the first in number of tests per 100,000 inhabitants (61,882), is the third district in number of people infected by the same variable (10,844) and the first in number of deaths (239). The city is also the prey of its own population density: more than three million inhabitants over 200 km2. An example of how this has had an impact is what was observed last year in the cities of Buenos Aires, which were the first major source of contagion and which was contained by a test and test plan. isolation.

The province of Buenos Aires, meanwhile, is fourth in number of deaths per 100,000 inhabitants and ninth in number of infected people. But, again, geography sets the pace for the indicators: the study does not divide the ACS from within, so the differences between the two cannot be analyzed.

The vaccination plan

A separate chapter deserves the results of the vaccination plan. 16.6% of Argentines received some of the applied vaccines, of which 14.6% was the first dose. The City leads the percentage of its population vaccinated, with 23.9%, followed by La Pampa (20.8%), San Luis (20.2%) and Tierra del Fuego (18.5%).

The national government distributed the doses according to the population of each district, with which it could be assumed that the percentages of the vaccinated population should be similar in all provinces. But that’s not the case, and at the other end of the table there are provinces with just over 10% of its population vaccinated.

Misiones is the one who vaccinated the least: 11.5%. There, according to data from the Public Vaccination Monitor, 231,150 doses were dispensed and 149,354 were applied, or 64%. Santiago del Estero vaccinated 12.4% (applied 65% of the doses distributed) and Corrientes, 13.8% (70% of the doses received).

Concerning the province of Buenos Aires, it is tenth in the ranking of the most vaccinated, with more than 3 million doses applied to 16.7% of its population, 86.5% of those it has received.

The Alem Foundation report was presented this Thursday in a Zoom to provincial radicalism lawmakers. In it, the president of the nation’s auditor general, Jesús Rodríguez, and the former health minister in Mauricio Macri’s administration, Adolfo Rubinstein, spoke.

In the presentation, Rubinstein pointed out that given the lack of vaccines and the atomization in the implementation of the plan according to the decisions of each district, the strategy at this time of the pandemic – as it should have been from the start – it’s “testing a lot more, which we don’t do” and although the tests have tripled, “should be ten times”.

At the end of March, the Ministry of Health decentralized the tests so that each province could choose its model. In the province of Buenos Aires, for example, at the beginning of April, it was decided to stop the collection of part of the suspected cases and to confirm the diagnosis by nexus.

However, however it is tested, the strategy should not stop there but precisely start at this pointThe key is to test to confirm cases, isolate positives, and trace close contacts. This is what the countries that have managed the pandemic best have done.

PS