With a number of 38 deaths from coronavirus reached in just one day, the country exceeded the total number of 28 deaths accumulated during the first 28 days since the first imported case of the deadly pathogen was announced.
These 38 new deaths, which add to the total of 173, and 99 critically ill patients, had been registered until yesterday by the Dominican Republic as a result of the lethal virus, just over a month after it was declared a global pandemic and 44 days since it was declared the first imported present case of this respiratory disease.
This is the highest number of deaths reported by the system in its daily reports, although the Minister of Public Health, Rafael Sánchez Cárdenas, explained that the number of deaths did not correspond to new cases and that it included the entry of other cases that were under investigation. .
It was not specified how many deaths correspond to the last 24 hours of registration. The country reached its first 39 deaths accumulated by Covid-19, on March 28, just 28 days after the presence of the first imported case was announced. That death number is included in bulletin number 10, where there were a total of 859 confirmed cases. The previous bulletin recorded 28 cases of deaths.
Yesterday’s report indicates that 80 percent of deaths have been registered in clinics and hospitals and 18 percent in homes.
Ascending line
The number of confirmed cases continues its ascending line with the registration of 208 new cases in 24 hours, to reach 2,967, of which 383 are in hospital isolation and 2,280 in home isolation.
According to the epidemiological report number 24 released yesterday by Sánchez Cárdenas, eight provinces continue to present the highest incidence of cases: National District, with 921 confirmed cases and 21 deaths; Duarte, 273 cases and 55 deaths; Santo Domingo, 512 cases and 28 deaths; Santiago, 363 cases and 14 deaths; Puerto Plata, 73 cases and eight deaths; La Vega, 192 cases and six deaths; San Pedro de Macorís, 35 cases and seven deaths, and Hermanas Mirabal, 50 cases and nine deaths.
The country maintains a fatality rate of 6% and has managed to recover 131 patients. 9,275 laboratory tests have been processed, of which 6,308 have been negative. 60% of confirmed cases are men.
Critical
The Minister of Public Health reported that both in clinics and hospitals a record was kept yesterday of 99 patients in delicate conditions admitted to intensive care units in different provinces, including Santo Domingo, Distrito Nacional, Duarte, Puerto Plata and La Vega.
This service is one in which the health system maintains its greatest weaknesses, due to the deficit of beds and specialists that it traditionally presents at public and private levels.
Few specialists
The Minister of Health called on public and private health centers to redouble the level of specialization in care.
He said that a good part of health teaching centers have been devoid of specialists, leaving the attention concentrated mostly on their staff of resident doctors.
Residents are general practitioners in training who study in the different specialties of medical science in hospitals and centers where medical residency programs are taught.
On several occasions during his public interventions, Dr. Sánchez Cárdenas has drawn attention to the lack of specialists or medical assistants in health centers, leaving the care of patients with Co0vid-19 in the hands of young doctors, without adequate experience.
After the State’s decision that people over 60 years of age and with some comorbidities remain in home isolation, many specialist doctors were left out of the hospital service and others did not offer services in person due to the possibility of contagion that exists.
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