Conrado Estol: “In unvaccinated countries like ours, cases and mortality will increase a lot”

The prestigious neurologist Conrado Estol He warned of the critical situation Argentina could face with the Delta variable of the coronavirus if it does not change its health policies.

Stranded in New York – he cannot return home because his flight has been canceled – the specialist said this in the face of Delta’s advance. the world can be divided into two types of countries:Those who have a large portion of their population vaccinated with a full regimen and can defend themselves and those who are not vaccinated like ours, where cases and deaths will increase dramatically”.

The projection is explained by the transmissibility of this COVID-19 variable. “Delta is the first variant to be global. Alpha, the UK version, was 40% more contagious than the original variant. And Delta is 40% more contagious than Alpha. As it is spread more easily, more people are infected and there is always a percentage who will have a severe version of the disease and die.», He clarified.

In countries like Israel and the UK, where much of the population has received two doses of one of the coronavirus vaccines, Delta has caused an increase in infections but not hospitalizations. On the other hand, countries like Russia and Indonesia which are still behind in their vaccination campaigns are experiencing a serious health crisis.

“The proportion of vaccinated is very important. Those with up to 30% of their population vaccinated are three times more infected per 100,000 population than those with 60%. This is why we are seeing that the UK, which has 85% of its population on one dose and 60% on two, has a sharp increase in infections with minimal hospitalizations, ”he reported.

At the other extreme, Russia and Indonesia: “They live in chaos, just like Africa. In Uganda, there have been 30 deaths in intensive care where they lacked oxygen. Zambia and Namibia are accumulating bodies. In South Africa, a very serious third wave. He no longer defends them what he defended them before the other variants, that there is no excess weight and that people move outside”.

In the United States, Delta has slowed the decline in cases. It is suffered by the states with the lowest percentage of vaccinated. New York, a city of 20 million people, has a test positivity rate of 0.4%. On Monday, there were 3 deaths.

“We have to buy Pfizer and Moderna vaccines… And not to mention Novavax, a different vaccine that was 90% effective. Not having citizens vaccinated or not having applied both doses puts us in the best case for more deaths, ”he stressed.

On the other side, Estol recommended not to buy more Chinese vaccines from Sinopharm because there are studies done before the onset of Delta that show that they are less effective. The Argentine government recently announced that it will incorporate 24 million doses of these inoculants which will start arriving in the coming days.

The neurologist is in the United States, trying to find a flight back to Argentina, where hundreds of patients and the stroke unit he runs at Sanatorio Güemes are waiting for him. He is one of the direct victims of the Argentine government’s decision to restrict the daily entry quota of people into the country, which has forced airlines to cancel their operations in Ezeiza.

In his eyes, the decision makes no sense. “We could understand that the flights are limited to the countries of Latin America, where today is the epicenter of the pandemic, but from the United States, where the Argentines arrive vaccinated with the best vaccines in the world knowing that Delta is the current problem? ” .

“I understand that you have to take care of the land border. Let’s look at Uruguay, in Rivera, where Manaus’ P1 variant entered and claimed 5,000 lives in this second wave. Those coming from the United States not only leave a dose for an Argentinian who cannot travel, but they also arrive vaccinated with something that the virus costs much more to invade. It is necessary to quintuple the flights to the USA, it is obvious“, He detailed.

“Canceling is easy, but the hard part is testing. What you need to do here is test, isolate, buy vaccines early and apply them quickly. Here they want to cover a leak in the garden when in reality the pipe broke in the middle of the living room“, Traced Estol in dialogue with Marcelo Longobardi in Tabbed radio.

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