Panama City, Feb 13 Panamanian authorities reported this Sunday 1,203 new cases of covid-19 and 12 deaths, which raised confirmed infections to 742,854 and deaths from the disease to 7,950 in 23 months of the pandemic. “Of the 12 deaths reported for today, Sunday, the Department of Epidemiology of the Ministry of Health (Minsa) highlights that 9 deceased did not have the complete vaccination schedule or even did not have any doses,” the health office said. . There are 66 patients hospitalized in intensive care units (ICU) and 402 in the general ward, while 21,146 are isolated at home and 99 in hotels, the daily Minsa report specified. On the last day, 8,276 tests were applied to detect the new SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which causes covid, which showed a positivity of 14.5%. Panama, a country of 4.28 million inhabitants, has maintained a downward trend in the pace of the pandemic in recent weeks after a vertiginous rise driven by the omicron variant, which was detected in mid-December. The peak of this fourth wave was recorded in mid-January, when more than 12,000 cases were reported in one day and positivity exceeded 36%. As for vaccination against covid, which began in January 2021 in Panama, 7,420,527 doses of vaccine have been administered, the vast majority from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer. At least 82.5% of the target population, that is, people 5 years of age and older, have a dose of the vaccine; 72.9% with two, and 44.2% with a booster dose, which applies to those over 16 years of age. The World Health Organization (WHO) indicated in its most recent report that at least 57 out of 100 people have a complete vaccination schedule and 72% have received at least one dose, being one of the countries with the highest proportion of the fully immunized population, above the global average of 53%.
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