Lima, Jan 9 (EFE).- The Minister of Health of Peru, César Vásquez, confirmed that the covid-19 pandemic ended in May 2023, but insisted on asking his compatriots to be vaccinated against the disease given the increase of cases, which has already caused 13 deaths so far this year in the country.
“What I want to say, with complete clarity, is that the pandemic ended in May 2023, according to the WHO (World Health Organization); therefore, we are not facing a sixth wave,” Vásquez remarked this Monday. when commenting on the increase in cases that has caused concern in a sector of the Peruvian population.
The minister added that “there is a foreseeable increase in Covid-19 cases, given the seasonality and the end-of-year holidays,” but noted that “there is no increase in admissions to hospitalization or ICU (intensive care units).”
Given this situation, he reiterated the importance of the use of the bivalent vaccine, which protects against the JN.1 lineage of the coronavirus, which is considered highly contagious at this time in the Andean country.
“The vaccine we are using is the bivalent one, which, according to the WHO, is a vaccine that protects against severe cases and mortality. The vaccine is the safest way to protect our family members who have some risk factor, whether it is advanced age or illness,” he said.
In that sense, he confirmed that during the first epidemiological week of 2024, 13 deaths from covid-19 were reported, all of them from groups considered vulnerable, since 11 were adults over 65 years of age with comorbidities and 2 were under 65 years of age with severe illnesses. .
According to official data, Peru recorded an average of 600 to 700 cases of Covid-19 per week last November and currently exceeds 1,700 weekly infections.
In the first waves of the pandemic, the Andean country reached the highest mortality rate in the world due to the disease, with more than 200,000 deaths and three million infections.
In that sense, the minister asked the population to remain calm regarding the comments of supposed experts who, he said, are intended to alarm about the current state of the disease and reiterated that the bivalent vaccine is effective in avoiding “severe or of mortality”. EFE
dub/rrt
2024-01-09 05:15:00
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