The coronavirus remains a latent threat. Although the situation is not like that of a few years ago, the virus continues to mutate and new strains appear that renew the alerts of specialists. That is why they insist on vaccination and the application of reinforcements to maintain immunity and thus avoid hospital risks. In addition, since neither physical distancing nor any type of isolation is in force, other respiratory viruses are in circulation for which there are also inoculations.
“COVID in San Luis is really low, but we don’t have to neglect ourselves because the low number of detected cases does not mean that the virus is not there, it continues to circulate, but we have a large part of the population vaccinated. This makes the symptoms are very mild, in such a way that the person does not even realize that they have them or it passes as a slight congestion, so they do not go to the doctor, so we do not have laboratory tests and we do not have a real number,” explained the chief from the Epidemiology Program of the Ministry of Health, Rodrigo Verdugo.
“Precisely all these new strains that are mostly descendants of omicron have the quality of being highly transmissible, but with less seriousness in the cases, so we do not have an impact on hospitalizations,” he admitted.
According to Verdugo, the province does not exceed ten weekly cases of coronavirus in official counts.
“This low perception of risk also implies that fewer people are being vaccinated and that’s where the problem lies, because now there are few cases precisely because we have a large part of the population inoculated, but that vaccine is decreasing its effectiveness over time. Now the reinforcements in people who are not at risk should be placed once a year and those who are at risk have to do it every six months. Before the interval was four months,” he said.
The official acknowledged that they had hospitalizations for COVID-19 but the majority evolved favorably. They were older people with other health risks.
“We have had very low deaths this year. We have to take into account that the coronavirus continues to be a dangerous disease although there are more hospitalized cases of influenza than of coronavirus. With influenza there can also be fatal cases,” he warned.
Verdugo said that the Ministry of Health monitors three epidemiological corridors: bronchiolitis, influenza and pneumonia.
“Bronchiolitis affects children under the age of two. Currently, that curve of cases with which we came to be in an outbreak situation has dropped below the alarm zone and we are in a security zone, that is to say that the cases. This year that curve was advanced, but we did not have more infections than in other years. Now we are fine, with an expected number of cases,” he said.
Regarding influenza, he stated that the situation is an outbreak with a lot of circulation of the disease in the population. “We’ve seen an increase in hospitalizations for influenza,” she added.
The head of the Epidemiology Program alerted that statistically there is a second outbreak between August and September, which is why he invited the community to get vaccinated.
“Regarding pneumonia, we were in an alarm zone a few weeks ago, but now we are also in a security zone,” he said.
Atypical temperatures for this time of year are a factor that greatly influences the decrease in the number of respiratory virus cases.
“One of the main transmission factors is overcrowding and we always close everything when it’s cold. Now that the beautiful days are here, we ventilate the rooms more and this helps reduce cases,” made a difference.
The flu vaccine that is applied to avoid some of these diseases is given to children between 6 months and 2 years of age, to all those over 65 years of age, pregnant women, health personnel and people between 2 and 65 years of age. with risk factors. In the latter case, the application of the vaccine must be with a medical indication.
Verdugo clarified that immunizations are available in all health centers in the province throughout the year.
Writing/MGE
2023-08-15 10:46:16
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