Colombia registers 18,737 new cases of covid-19, this Saturday, May 22

The Ministry of Health and Social Protection reported: this Saturday, May 22, 18,737 new cases of covid-19 in Colombia. In the last 24 hours, 94,683 tests which 46,797 threads PCR and 47886 of antigens.

The report also notes that, 509 Colombians died of the disease within the last 24 hours. In this way, the country reaches a total of 84,228 deaths since the virus reached the national territory.

By clustering all the figures, Colombia has reached 3,210,787 infected people, of which 104,752 active cases and 3,011,234 correspond to positive cases which have already overcome the disease.

Regarding the regions with the most reported cases, Bogota leads with 5424 infected, followed by Antioquia with 2386 and in third place Cundinamarca with 2,030.

There are 737 conglomerates in the country. The territories are: Amazonas, Antioquia, Arauca, Atlántico, Barranquilla, Bogotá, Bolívar, Boyacá, Buenaventura, Caldas, Caquetá, Cartagena, Casanare, Cauca, Cesar, Chocó, Córdoba, Cundinamarca, Guainía, Guaviainía, Huila, Huila, Meta, Nariño, Norte de Santander, Putumayo, Quindío, Risaralda, San Andrés, Santa Marta, Santander, Sucre, Tolima, Valle del Cauca, Vaupés, Vichada.

The most recent report from the Ministry of Health also states that, until midnight on May 20, they had already been applied in Colombia. a total of 8,134,853 doses of the covid-19 vaccine.

According to the same report, the number of fully vaccinated Colombians, that is, those who have already received two doses of biological product, There are currently 3,088,306 people.

Likewise, an increase in the vaccination rate was detected, where for the day, a total of 125,934 doses were applied, of which 39,264 correspond to the second injection.

The World Health Organization (WHO) epidemiological update document states that, for the second week in a row, the number of covid-19 cases remains at the highest level since the start of the pandemic, with more than 5.7 million new cases weekly, after nine weeks of increase.

Likewise, the number of deaths continues to increase for the seventh consecutive week worldwide, with more than 93,000 deaths, according to the WHO.

Faced with this panorama, Julián Fernández Niño, director of epidemiology and demography of the Ministry of Health and Social Protection, explained that the reason for this increase is due to the presence of covid variants which, according to the evidence, are more contagious, This facilitates the increase in infections and, by not having a large number of people vaccinated around the world, there is still a large vulnerable population, either because of their age or their co-morbidities.

“Among the variants of interest, which are those which modify the initial behavior of the virus and which the WHO is particularly evaluating, 142 countries reported the UK variant, 97 countries reported South Africa and 56 countries reported Brazil “, explained Fernández Niño.

One variant of interest that has drawn attention in this weekly update from the WHO is that of India. According to Fernández Niño, this is the most recent identified as interesting by the WHO and was first identified in December of last year.

“It is known from this that he has two sublineages, which differ slightly due to their characteristic mutations,” said the official, noting that both lineages have shown greater transmissibility which, according to the evidence, “has a Higher growth rate than other variants circulating in India ‘, therefore higher transmissibility is suggested.

In addition, the manager underlined that this variant “presents in its conformation several mutations: L452R, which has been linked to an increase in transmissibility, reduction of neutralization by certain treatments with monoclonal antibodies; P681R can improve spike protein binding and subsequent cleavage, improve systemic infection and membrane fusion, and E484Q, which would lead to a decrease in neutralization by the antibodies ”, underlined Fernández Niño.

For this reason, the Director of Epidemiology drew attention to strengthening adherence to self-care measures, such as the use of a mask and physical distancing, which in essence , are the best barriers that can be placed against the transmission of the virus.

On the other hand, Fernández Niño pointed out that the preliminary evidence available for the Indian variant indicates that “could escape the control of the antibodies induced by the infection or by vaccination to a certain extent ”, which would generate a moderate efficacy of the vaccination.

The official explained that the evidence would indicate that it is one of the most contagious that has been identified worldwide and pointed out that in Colombia it has not been identified this variant in ongoing genomic studies.

KEEP READING: