Between December 12 and 22, in Puerto Rico 27,143 people have been diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 and, according to a preliminary analysis, 75% of the cases correspond to people under 41 years of age and 93% were not vaccinated or they needed the booster dose, confirmed the Chief Epidemiology Officer of the Department of Health, Melissa Marzán.
While 92% of the cases detected in the last 72 hours – about 22,247 as reported at 6:30 on Thursday night by the portal managed by the professor of biostatistics at Harvard University and member of the Scientific Coalition, Rafael Irizarry – are compatible with the Omicron variant, according to a preliminary analysis carried out through the sentinel genomic surveillance effort carried out by the Department of Health in coordination with private laboratories, academia, the CDC Branch, and the Public Health Trust.
The day that more cases have been reported during the last week was December 22 with 7,702 infections, a figure that could increase as cases are reported in the BioPortal of the health agency.
In contrast, and to demonstrate the huge upturn in coronavirus cases that affects the island, Marzán mentioned that in the past three months the accumulation of infections confirmed by molecular and antigen tests is 16,189.
Faced with this avalanche of thousands of infections that multiply per day and that have raised the positivity of cases to over 19%, the Secretary of the Department of Health, Carlos Mellado, did not hesitate to say that the predominant variant at this time on the island It is the Ómicron, even though there are only four confirmed cases confirmed by sequencing, including one reported this Thursday in a girl between 0 and 5 years old from the Ponce region who has no travel history. The other three cases are from the Fajardo, Metro and Caguas region. One of the samples of these confirmed cases was taken on November 29, just three days after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared Ómicron a variant of concern and five days after it was first reported in South Africa.
“Definitely (it is the predominant one). Right now, if we observe the behavior of the pandemic as soon as the Omicron variant arrived in Puerto Rico, we began to have a series of infections that we had not seen in the past. An exponential increase in infections. Yes, of course it is the Ómicron variant, certainly yes ”, pointed out Mellado.
The increase in positivity has caused people to go en masse to be tested for COVID-19 through private laboratories and fixed points that Salud has around the archipelago.
According to Marzán, in the past 10 days, 301,331 molecular and antigen tests were carried out. On December 20 alone, 54,000 tests were done.
“What does the available data tell us? That the probability of infection in an unvaccinated person is three times higher compared to a person who is vaccinated. And compared to a person who has a ‘booster’ it is 7 times. So, certainly, vaccination continues to be an important tool for reducing transmission, “said Marzán, adding that the call continues to be for people to come to receive their booster doses” because we know that the new variant Ómicron increases their protection. ”.
In this sense, Dr. Iris Cardona, First Medical Health Officer and coordinator of the vaccination plan against COVID-19 in Puerto Rico, indicated that 73% of the island’s population (3.2 million inhabitants) has the primary series of inoculation (two doses of Pfizer or Moderna or a single dose of Johnson & Johnson), while 84% have at least one dose.
Regarding reinforcements – one of the issues that most occupies the government at this stage of the pandemic – it was specified that there are currently 1,268,356 people who need that additional dose. Of these, 666,839 received the so-called “booster”. “This represents 25% of the population,” Cardona explained, recalling that any person over 16 years of age who has completed the initial series is eligible for the “booster.”
In the pediatric population aged 5 to 11 years, 94,721 minors have received at least one dose of the vaccine, while 56,161 of these have already completed the series of two doses.
Be careful, not everyone should run to get tested
Health experts were emphatic in mentioning that there should be no hysteria, even though the numbers are alarming and that screening tests are suggested for particular groups.
“Nasal congestion, cough, loss of smell or taste, headache, muscle pain, fever and dry throat are the most reported symptoms during the rebound, according to case research that has been done. If you present any of these symptoms, no matter how mild, at this time we are exhorting you to take the test and withdraw from activities to avoid exposing other people in the community, “said Marzán.
She reiterated that close contacts of a person who has tested positive have to quarantine for seven days if they are vaccinated or 14 days if they are not vaccinated. On the fifth day of exposure, a screening test is recommended. A contact person is one who was close to a patient who tested positive for the virus for more than 15 minutes and less than six feet away.
“If you were in contact with a person who tested positive, you do not have to go the next day to take a test because you will not obtain an accurate result,” emphasized the epidemiologist when clarifying that a person who is infected does not have to repeat the test after completing the 10-day isolation.
The Dept. of Health reiterated this week that the agency has some 329,810 antigen tests and 41,000 molecular tests. These next days 9,000 PCR tests and 70,000 additional antigen tests will be received.
Likewise, it was emphasized that the agency is conducting some 18,000 tests (antigen and molecular) through about 60 fixed centers around the island. Given the increase in cases, expectations are to increase the number of tests to 40,000. This would be in addition to those carried out by private laboratories, where more than 1.6 million virus detection tests have been carried out throughout the pandemic.
By the way, there is no shortage of the vaccine. “Obviously, there is a lot of demand, but there is no shortage,” Mellado said.
On Tuesday, the president of Toledo Laboratories, Ilia Toledo, told the press that there was no shortage of tests on the island. “Is not correct. All the laboratories have supplies ”, she emphasized.
For his part, Mariano de Socarraz, president of CorePlus Puerto Rico, did accept that there is an overload of work among employees and they cannot cope. He explained that the problem is not taking the sample from the patient, but manually entering the data to inform the Health Department of the result obtained in each test, a process that takes between 24 to 48 hours.
Even though historical numbers of infections have been registered and that the incidence of cases is more than 881 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, hospitalizations and deaths remain relatively stable.
Watch the Video of the drive-thru line:
