Although the president’s administration Andrés Manuel López Obrador has emphasized that in the last three weeks there has been a decrease in the number of infections of Covid-19 In the country, data from the Ministry of Health (Ssa) also indicate that the number of diagnostic tests decreased considerably.
The explanation he gave about it Hugo López-Gatell Ramírez, Undersecretary of Prevention and Health Promotion, is that as there are fewer people with coronavirus symptoms, fewer hospitalized and deaths, there will be fewer PCR tests to detect the SARS-CoV-2, Well, he assured, fewer people will need to apply it.
“What has been proposed is the other way around, it is believed that it was decided to lower the number of tests to lower the number of cases; not true, the policy is the same.
“If there are symptoms, the test is done. To the extent that there are fewer people with symptoms, there are fewer hospitalized and fewer deaths, “said the federal official this week.
Also read: They anticipate 130 thousand deaths in December
In this regard, specialists consulted by EL UNIVERSAL agreed that the decrease in the number of positive cases of Covid-19 in the national territory may be due to the low application of diagnostic tests, which should be done in any situation and not only in cases serious or in people who have presented respiratory insufficiency.
Malaquías López Cervantes, Academic of Public Health of the Faculty of Medicine of the ONE, highlighted that Mexico has been characterized by applying a low number of tests to detect the disease and that they are only done in patients with respiratory failure.
“What about the undersecretary [de Salud] is that the beans are burned for saying that there are fewer cases, [pero] has no scruples.
“The worst thing is that in a country where tests have practically never been done [de Covid-19] enough, now let it be said that we need less.
“In addition, tests have never been applied to suspected cases, only suspects with respiratory failure are covered, so those who do not have this condition are not even tested,” he said.
Also read: Mexico overcomes “catastrophic scenario” of deaths from Covid-19
Yesterday, Mike Ryan, director of the Department of Health Emergencies of the WHO, warned that the magnitude of the Covid-19 crisis in Mexico is underestimated: “The tests are limited, with three per 100,000 people per day, which can be compared to more than 150 per 100,000 people in the United States” .
According to information from the University of Oxford, until July 21, Mexico carried out 0.10 tests for every thousand people; By August 16, the figure was reduced to 0.07 daily tests per thousand inhabitants.
In this sense, Rodolfo de la Torre, director of Social Development of the Espinosa Yglesias Study Center, He agreed that the strategy of the Ministry of Health restricted the tests to serious cases of coronavirus, which, he said, does not allow to know if the number of daily infections is actually lower.
“The WHO has established fundamental elements to combat the pandemic, one of them is the number of tests that are carried out, these do not have to be for the entire population, but they should not be restricted to severe cases, but rather they play a role preventive if they are applied selectively but broadly to the population and that is not happening in Mexico, “he said.
About, Alejandro Macías, Former infectologist for the care of influenza in 2009 and current member of the UNAM commission for the care of the coronavirus, commented that doing more tests to detect the coronavirus would be beneficial to know the direction of the epidemic in Mexico.
Also read: WHO warns about the magnitude of the pandemic in Mexico
“It may be paradoxical that doing more tests has an impact on fewer cases, because it seems that the more tests, the more cases you will detect and that may be true in some circumstances, but the more tests you do, the more likely you are to find the sick. and to be able to isolate them in the immediate term, which will have an impact on there being fewer community infections and the rate will be reduced, ”said the specialist.
He warned that Mexico has a high rate of positivity, so, he said, it is necessary for the country to adopt containment or primary prevention to detect early and promptly address the emergency.
“Ideally, contacts should go into isolation and have the ability to test them for better social dynamics and a lower rate of contamination,” he said.
On the subject, Hugo López-Gatell Ramírez reported that as of August 21, the federal government expanded the definition of a suspected case of coronavirus, which will include the loss of smell and taste, as well as diarrhea, in order to apply diagnostic tests for people with such symptoms and attend them in a timely manner.
– .
