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“If I started to see daily deaths increase, that would worry me a lot.”

The Health Department monitors close to 500 people who are suspected of having been in contact with any patient with the Covid-19 coronavirus, as part of the efforts to carry out this screening that, in the first weeks since they began to register infections, it was practically non-existent.

“Right now I understand that the number is hovering around 500. An effort is being made to have a complete list, because since (Sunday) we began a process of calling each of the Covid-19 patients,” explained the State epidemiologist, David Capó.

According to Capó, who was appointed to the post last week, both hospitals and private laboratories that perform coronavirus tests are obliged to provide the Department of Health with the information of each person from whom a sample is taken. From these data, once a positive case arises, the agency communicates with the patient or someone close to them, in turn identifying and alerting those who may have been close to the infected.

Currently, the Health Department has teams, led by epidemiologists from each of the eight regions, who are dedicated to fulfilling that role. Throughout Puerto Rico, the agency has some 230 outstanding people in this work, according to Capó, who replaced Carmen Deseda in the position.

However, the epidemiologist acknowledged that there is still no visibility of the recovery process in most of the confirmed cases, something that he assured will change in the coming days. The urgency to know the status of patients is heightened by the authorities’ interest in allowing the blood donation of these patients with the expectation that the antibodies developed can be used in some of the most critical cases.

“From the advice they have given us, these transfusions from people who have antibodies are having good efficacy in critically ill patients. If the people who recover from this virus manage to contribute to the fact that another human being does not reach a state that cannot get out of the situation, it would be an impressive team effort, ”said Capó.

Deaths as an indicator

The state epidemiologist assures that he understands the skepticism that generated in a good part of the population the optimistic projections that the government apparatus presented last Sunday. Capó, along with Health officials and members of the medical task force, anticipated that when the peak of contagions is reached, in early May, there will have been about 1,750 positive cases, of which 10% are expected to require care. intensive.

“I would like to test 100% of Puerto Ricans, but we do not have all the samples to measure the coronavirus to the entire population, so we have to prioritize who adds more value to test, which are those who are most at risk of severity and mortality. With the evidence we have so far, we see that the case fatality rate is being kept under control, with no more than two or three deaths a day. If I started to see daily deaths increasing, that would worry me a lot. Because irrespective of the number of people screened, who tests people with mild symptoms will not necessarily alter the number of deaths, “argued Capó, for whom the low mortality rate reflected so far is evidence of the effectiveness of movement restrictions on the population.

Official projections, however, are far from some of the possible scenarios that had previously been raised by the ‘task force’ and the health secretary, Lorenzo González.

In past weeks, the official speech recognized scenarios with tens of thousands of deaths as a possibility and mentioned that the country needed to have at least 3,000 artificial ventilators to avoid reaching a point where doctors had to decide which patients to attend and which not to. .

“If we all go out into the street right now, unfortunately it can happen as it is happening in other countries. Right now in China, after almost a full week without new cases, some of the restrictions began to be released and what we are seeing is that there are beginning to be new peaks, “said Capó, in order to explain the disparity between the worst scenarios considered and the optimism of the official projections.

And in the face of such encouraging forecasts, how is FEMA convinced, for example, that Puerto Rico needs the 2,500 additional fans that the government has requested, when in other jurisdictions in the United States it is not known if they will have enough devices to deal with the crisis ?, asked Metro.

“We are preparing ourselves for a scenario in which irrespective of the situation we can attend to our people and avoid a catastrophe. We are expecting 3,000 fans and New York tens of thousands. We are asking for a fraction to make sure that our people are well, “Capó replied.

Although there are still at least several weeks for this new contagion curve to begin to decrease, Capó assured that experiences in other countries are already being studied to determine which is the most appropriate model to release the restrictions.

One possibility would be that movement rules are gradually relaxed, initially benefiting people with fewer risk factors.

“We have the privilege that it is not our turn to have the world looking at us, but to see other countries first. Ideally, when we have to reach that point of relaxing quarantine in certain aspects, not only do we know what works and what doesn’t, but we already have access to medication that allows us to tell the population at less risk that they’ve been leaving, that We have the medicine in case I get the infection, ‘”Capó stressed.

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