The vaccine against covid-19 it has saved many lives and prevented the healthcare system from collapsing again in 2022, the third year of the pandemic. It’s a much repeated mantra but it is now the Institute of Public Health and Labor of Navarra (ISPLN) put the figures on that favorable impact of the vaccine in a report released this week. In this document – in which the 8 waves of coronaviruses that have occurred in Navarre are analyzed – it is detailed that in the last year, between October 2021 and last September, they were detected in Navarre 208,173 cases of coronavirus, more than double the 87,251 infections recorded in the previous year and a half –between February 2020 and September 2021–.
However, this skyrocketing incidence has not translated into a greater impact at the hospital level and deaths, but on the contrary: despite having many more infections, there have been fewer hospitalizations and deaths from coronavirus. And this is due to the high rates of natural (for overcoming the disease) and artificial (vaccine) immunity present in the population of Navarre, which, although they have not served to contain the transmission, have prevented many serious cases. This is the main conclusion reached by public health experts in this report, to which should be added the fact that the arrival of new, less aggressive variants.
Thus, the figures provided by the ISPLN documents are as follows: between February 2020 and September 2021 – a year and a half – 87,251 cases of coronavirus were confirmed in Navarre, 6,281 hospital admissions, 666 ICU admissions and 1,250 deaths. However, in the last year – from October 2021 to September 2022 – cases doubled but hospitalizations and deaths decreased significantly: 208,173 infections in this period, but 2,313 hospital admissions (one third of the previous period), 166 ICU admissions (four times less) and 475 deaths (one third).
“These marked decreases in the severity and lethality of covid indicate that in this new phase (covid-19) It has become a disease with very different severity characteristics from what it had before. This change is explained by the high efficacy of vaccines in reducing the severity of the infection and by the high vaccination coverage achieved early in the population of Navarra. The arrival of less virulent variants of SARS-CoV-2 and progress in the clinical management of infected people have also contributed to this progress ”, details Public Health in the report.
Half of Navarre infected
In the two years and nine months since the pandemic, public health has confirmed 295,000 contagious, which means that almost half of Navarre’s population has been infected. Of the eight waves of covid-19, the one that generated the most cases is the sixth – between October 2021 and March 2022 – with 140,000 cases, although it should be borne in mind that most infections were not registered in the first wave and only 10,349 have been confirmed.
As for income, the second wave – from June to December 2020 – was the one that exerted the greatest pressure on the health system, with 2,331 hospitalizations, of which 239 in intensive care. However, even in the first wave, the hospital impact was very large with 1,934 hospitalizations, of which 139 in intensive care. A total of 8,594 hospitalizations were recorded, of which 832 in intensive care.
Of the 1,725 deaths during the entire pandemic, more than half (969) occurred in the first two waves (529 in the first and 440 in the second). The 250 of the sixth wave and the 146 dead from June to today also affect.
