“The size of the Delta wave could be smaller than what is happening in the northern hemisphere because we were much more infected than they and because we managed to contain their income with the restrictions on flights and that allowed us to continue advancing with vaccination “, analyzes the bioinformatician from the National University of Córdoba (UNC) and researcher from Conicet Rodrigo Quiroga.
In that sense, he explained that the size of that wave will depend on how society maintains care measures (use of chinstrap, ventilation and distance), the possibility of vaccinating children and adolescents -when this vaccination begins- and with what speed it is given, in addition to the care in schools and the restrictions that can be maintained to avoid agglomerations of unvaccinated people.
When comparing the situation of Argentina with other countriesQuiroga described that, “when the Delta wave began, we estimate that in the United Kingdom half of the population here had been infected; and in the United States, the places where the outbreak is greatest have a very low vaccination rate.”
Frequency of variants and epidemiological outbreak
For Humberto Debat, virologist and member of the SARS-CoV-2 Argentine Interinstitutional Genomics Project (PAIS), “when talking about a third wave, we must decouple the frequency of variants with an epidemiological outbreak.”
“For example, the increase in the Mu and Delta variants in Chile is happening with a curve of cases that goes down, that is, there the Delta is not generating an uncontrolled increase in cases,” he said.
Debat agreed that “in Argentina we are leaving behind a second wave where there were more than two million reported cases, which implies that there were about 12 million infections.” And he added: “To that we must add more than 48 million doses of vaccines applied.”
Very high coverage
“Then we are with a population with a very high coverage either induced by the vaccine or by very recent convalescence, and this implies tens of millions of Argentines where the virus would have more difficulties to circulate, “he added.
However, Debat remarked that in the world the third waves arrive, so “there is no evidence that allows us to say that it will not happen here; in Argentina the third wave is going to arrive, it is not known if in two weeks or two months, and what is expected is that there will be a decoupling between reported cases and hospitalizations and deaths. “
The specialist also pointed out that there may be a “difficulty to appreciate when cases begin to increase because vaccination will make many asymptomatic or mild; then people are not going to be tested, this could impact the ability to predict “.
Cases drop, restrictions drop
For his part, the physicist and researcher of Conicet and secretary of Institutional Planning and Evaluation of the National University of Hurlingham, Jorge Aliaga, affirmed that “cases are going down a lot and in a very auspicious way, but every time this happens many openings are made and this is always a risk. “
“If vaccines are now entering that could immunize people from 12 to 17, the ideal would be to wait a month until this population is also vaccinated to make openings; incidentally it is hotter and that favors ventilation,” said Aliaga, for whom These measures could help to further mitigate the impact of the Delta variant, dominant globally with the exception of South America.
Competition between variants
On the way in which the variants are “competing” with each other for their prevalence in the region, Debat pointed out that “in southern Brazil Delta is already predominant and displaced Gamma (identified for the first time in Manaus), and in the The rest of that country is very likely to happen over time because Delta is the variant with the highest transmissibility that has been detected so far. ” “In Peru, the frequency of Delta is also increasing, displacing Lambda (or Andina),” he explained.
The virologist pointed out that “last week a study was known that analyzed more than 2 million sequences and concluded that Delta is the most transmissible but Mu (identified for the first time in Colombia and that so far it is a variant of interest according to WHO) was below Delta but above Gamma and Alpha (UK) “.
“This analysis may support what we are seeing in Chile, which had a landscape very similar to ours dominated by Gamma, with 60 percent, and with 20 percent Lambda, and in recent weeks Delta and Mu have been increasing its frequency, in fact Lambda was almost entirely displaced and Mu is growing at a rate similar to the Delta, “he said.
Delta in Argentina
Regarding the situation in the country, Debat described that “sporadic detection” of the Delta variant is increasing, but in the latest report from the Ministry of Health, all detections in the last week “were restricted to the City of Buenos Aires, Córdoba and few cases in the province of Buenos Aires, while in the rest of the jurisdictions there was no detection “.
The specialist remarked that “a particular case is Córdoba, where the latest report with data analysis as of September 3 indicates that 2.2 percent of the community cases randomly sequenced corresponded to the Delta variant “.
“This is the first data with a percentage that we have in the country and indicates that if it behaves as in other countries, in about 4 to 6 weeks it could be dominant, he said.
Cases, internees and deaths
In Argentina there has been a decrease in notified cases for more than 16 weeks and the number of people admitted to intensive care and the number of deaths has also decreased. In relation to the cases, the teacher and researcher Soledad Retamar indicated that “the decrease was accentuated in the last 15 days.”
“While during the first 100 days of sick leave the variation between weeks was 20 percent less than the previous one, in these last 15 days that percentage of cases compared to the previous week represents between 25 and 30 percent less”, Retamar indicated.
The occupation of patients with Covid-19 in intensive care units was 1,593 beds on Friday, “80 percent less than the last peak and the lowest value in 13 months,” said the biochemist and analyst. of data Santiago Olszevicki.
To date, 48,643,176 vaccines against the coronavirus have been applied in Argentina, of which 28,958,206 correspond to the first dose and 19,684,970 to the second.
* By Natalia Concina from the Telam agency.
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