The Ministry of Health has presented to the Ministry of Health this afternoon the initial documentation for the islands of Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Tenerife and La Palma to go to phase 3 from de-escalation to the new normal. In this way, on Monday the entire Autonomous Community would be in this situation that the islands of La Graciosa, La Gomera and El Hierro have already released today.
In the documentation submitted epidemiological data are highlighted that are still very low considering that the pandemic continues. Currently, the islands have 185 active cases and five people are admitted to the ICU. The Canary Islands maintains its death toll at 160, without registering any COVID deaths in the last five days.
The data on care capacity (acute beds, ICU, material and human resources) did not vary from the transition to phase two with respect to phase three. At this time, the Ministry especially values the capacity for early detection of the disease with controls and traceability. In this sense, the Canary Islands reports that each day it determines an average of 200 suspected cases of COVID and more than 2,000 PCRs are carried out daily, of which an average of five people become positive cases.
In addition, the documentation has attached the island plans to return to the usual care activity. In all cases, the progressive recovery of Primary Care activity has been explained with the general population, it has been protocolized in different phases, depending on the epidemiological situation of each island, but always in a clean care circuit, differentiated from that of suspected COVID-19 patients.
For phase 3, hospital activity will recover up to 100% in outpatient consultations, functional tests, surgical interventions and hospitalization, always taking into account safety, distancing and hygiene measures.
All the islands have presented the results of their tracking plans and their capacities to carry out control and screening of vulnerable populations, such as cases and / or close contacts in closed centers such as nursing homes, social-health centers, care centers. to migrants, care centers for the disabled, inmates in prison, student residences or shelters. In this sense, the order that regulates visits to residences for the elderly and the plan to carry out PCR on all migrants who arrive in the Canary Islands in boats such as boats or cayucos have been explained to the Ministry.
In addition to the follow-up and tracing teams led by the Primary Care Managements or the insular ones, the General Directorate of Public Health keeps a follow-up on cases and / or close contacts with follow-up difficulties (such as the population in an irregular situation, immigrants, prostitution, homeless people, hospital escapes, uncontrolled and problematic case, tourists-language barriers-, other socio-demographic characteristics that make monitoring difficult). There is also a specific follow-up to cases and / or close contacts with a high possibility of transmission, such as workplaces with high contact or with the possibility of transmission to a high-risk population.
The Canary Islands have so far shown control of the pandemic situation with quick actions in very specific cases such as the study of contacts in intrafamily infections or the actions in the case of the positive traveler in COVID-19 who arrived from Madrid.
For all this, the passage to phase 3 of the de-escalation has been requested and the Canary Islands health authorities hope that the Ministry of Health will accept this request. The decision will be announced and published in the BOE this week.
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