Without elements to conclude that the peak of contagion was reached, the governments of Nation, province and city of Buenos Aires agree that the record of cases and deaths by coronavirus registered in the last days It could worsen in the coming weeks.
The Health teams of the three administrations are following with concern the evolution of the figures and analyze measures to prevent contagion growth from accelerating, even the reinstatement of a harsher quarantine. But, before deciding on a change of strategy, they will wait at least until the weekend, to check if the jump of the last days is consolidated as a trend.
In the meantime, they highlight that the case fatality rate in Argentina, 1.8% of deaths over confirmed cases, is one of the lowest in the region. Some examples: the case fatality rate in Brazil is 3.8%; in the United States and Peru, 3.7%, and that of Mexico, 11.3%. The health authorities attribute this phenomenon to the response of the health system, whose occupation remains at acceptable levels, according to the coincident evaluation of the governments of Alberto Fernández, Axel Kicillof and Horacio Rodríguez Larreta.
At Metropolitan area, where 89.8% of the cases reported yesterday were concentrated, the occupation of intensive care units (ICU) reaches 64.3%. In the last two weeks, this index increased at a rate of 0.36% on average, per day, much less than it grew in mid-June, before moving on to hard quarantine.
A linear projection indicates that the response capacity of the system will not go into crisis until at least September, although everything depends on the evolution of the number of cases.
“We need that additional effort. Make no mistake about the debate that we have left, we have the hardest weeks left in the city of Buenos Aires”, said the Buenos Aires Minister of Health, Fernán Quirós, during the morning report. “We have very intense weeks left, we all have to make another effort at this time, we need everyone to contribute something and what we can do is continue to link ourselves with our affections through technology,” he insisted.
In the Ministry of Health of the Nation they avoided making a forecast about when the peak of infections will occur, but explained that there are three factors to think that cases will continue to rise: low temperatures, the high percentage of the population that did not get infected and is susceptible to it, and the increase in the circulation of people as a result of the relaxation of the quarantine.
The possibility of a further tightening of the isolation measures was admitted this Wednesday by the Buenos Aires Minister of Health, Daniel Gollán. “If the numbers go off [de casos], will have to stop again [la circulación de personas]. The only thing that can happen is that the number of cases in the use of health services continues to increase, “he said, in dialogue with radio La Red. “We are standing in a situation of worrying increase in cases”, Held.
In the Kicillof government they insist that an “intermittent quarantine” will be used, allowing activities to be enabled or disabled, according to the evolution of the contagion curve. They warn that the growth of cases no longer occurs as a result of targeted outbreaks, but is distributed evenly in all AMBA districts. “Community circulation makes it much more difficult to combat the spread of the virus,” they explain.
In parallel, the Buenos Aires government is advancing in a new expansion of the number of ICUs, through three tools: the provision of new highly complex beds, the transformation of pediatric ICUs into URIs for adults and the intensification of the plasma donation campaign . The latter would reduce the average critical bed occupancy time per patient and lower the occupancy level.
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