why the curve is steepening in Argentina and how it can impact deaths

This Wednesday there was 16,056 coronavirus cases in Argentina. More than 8.063 occurred in the province of Buenos Aires and 1,707, in the federal capital. The figure is a 23 percent above to that of last Friday, when the thermometer had already frightened Argentines with nearly 13,000 infections recorded. The question is why is the curve growing so fast and how far it can go.

Roberto Debbag, vice-president of the Latin American Society of Pediatric Infectology, spoke about the “Hurricane Covid”, which consists of four “accelerators” of the curve: the most transmissible and virulent variants of the coronavirus, social relaxation, the absence of a systematic screening policy and the slowness of the vaccination campaign.

As for the variants, the two which concern the most are those of Great Britain and Manaus. The Ministry of Health has come out to clarify in the last few hours that in reality the Manaus variant there was no community traffic as had been interpreted from information released Monday: three cases without travel history and without close contact with a person returning from abroad.

However, for Debbag, the three cases would be anecdotal: “The Manaus variant has almost a 90 percent traffic in Brazil, 20 percent in Uruguay and 30 percent in Chile. Why should we be the exception? The British and Brazilian variants have the particularity of infecting more.

Social relaxation was reflected in the height of a party for 500 people in Entre Ríos, where most of the guests were over 60 years and there is no distancing or use of the chin strap. It’s an almost grotesque situation, but it sort of represents the current moment of AMBA habits. A lot of people act like nothing has happened.

The third point is that of a policy of systematic tests and here we see that the PCRs that are carried out vary a lot from one day to another, which reflects a response to daily demand more than research to find and isolate infected people, so that they do not continue to infect other people.

The strong positivity of the tests recorded today (28%) also sets the tone weakness or lack of ongoing case monitoring of Covid in the country. Talk about all the cases that exist and are not recorded.

According to Debbag, by making this projection we could say that this Wednesday in the country there could have been “60 thousand real cases”, against 16,000 registered. For the World Health Organization, a reasonable positivity rate would be 10 percent.

Buenos Aires Health Minister Fernán Quirós insisted on the need to step up these operations. But few districts in the country place this policy as a fundamental objective. Of the national government, they relativize it and in fact decided to decentralize the purchase of test kits in the provinces.

Finally appears the vaccination campaign which, as the government knows and has recognized, is progressing slowly. Debbag represented it graphically with these figures: “Argentina has vaccinated so farl 4 percent of its population and only 1.5 percent have both doses. This puts her in the position 62nd in the world vaccinated every 100 inhabitants.

One of the expert’s observations is that in Ezeiza, passengers arriving from abroad are tested for antigens, which have 60 percent sensitivity. “The one who tests negative goes home. And whoever tests negative should actually do a PCR, send him home, and if the result is positive, go find him. “

How fast is the contagion curve growing today contrast with the behavior of the first wave, when there was a gradual, almost flat increase, until reaching the October peak. Argentina today in a month it is to rediscover the values ​​of this moment and of the future in uncertainty.

The acceleration in the number of people infected so far has not had an impact on the number of deaths. This Friday were 164. “Four weeks,” Debbag said when asked if that number will be increased in the short term. However, it must be taken into account that the largest proportion of people currently infected with Covid have an average age between 40 and 60 years old. In the first wave, 83% of deaths occurred among those over 60.

PS