[ad_1]
A new key testimony added the investigation of the Prosecutor’s Office on the management of the COVID-19 pandemic, which mainly points to the former Minister of Health, Jaime Mañalich. This is the current head of Epidemiology of the Minsal, Rafael Araos, who testified, via zoom, on September 3 before the prosecutor Marcelo Carrasco, who is part of Xavier Armendariz’s team.
According to T13.clAraos began by explaining his arrival at the Minsal, where since March he has been providing advice and on May 22 he took over as head of Epidemiology, replacing Johanna Acevedo, who went on to direct Diplas. As they transmitted to him, they were looking for a new “leadership”.
Araos explained that they asked him to do things “my way”: “In other words, he migrated from a rather precarious daily report, understandable in any case, to one that depended on epidemiology and computer platforms,” Carrasco told the prosecutor, himself to which La Moneda and the lawyers of the other defendants tried to remove from the case investigating Jaime Mañalich for his performance and act during the COVID-19 pandemic.
When he arrived, Araos explained that he found a panorama where “there were few cases and deaths, there was talk of a new normal, a plateau, and questions began to arise in May when hospitals said that they had more deaths than those reported.”
This concept of “new normal” coined by Mañalich did not like the members of the Advisory Council, nor did Araos: “There were things in which he did not agree. If there were thousands of unreported cases in Epiviliga, I believed that it was necessary to To count them. I was also interested, seeing that the credibility was null, to go down the safe path. I said: what is the problem of incorporating 30 thousand cases (positive for coronavirus), and there were communication problems, but they acted well. “
But soon came a report from Cyprus which addressed the difference of more than 5,000 cases between the number of deaths reported by the authority in its daily balances. On this, Araos assures that the change in the delivery of the number of deceased was not a “reactive” reaction, since it was proposed by the same Advisory Council.
“The system used by the minister, whatever it was, did not measure up due to the complexity of the situation,” he admitted. Specifically, Mañalich had an “own system”, where hospitals and seremías delivered supplies.
“I think they tried to do what Sochimi did more successfully with its survey of use of critical beds and somehow renounce mortality outside of hospitals, which is difficult to investigate,” he explains.
“It costs me nothing in terms of his method, which looking back was insufficient, he could not,” he said.
The latter was also ratified in another statement before the Prosecutor’s Office issued by Johanna Acevedo, who specified that Mañalich decided to set up a “parallel” system in charge of his chief of staff, Itziar Linazasoro. This parallel report ended up affecting epidemiological reports, ensuring that they were “limited” because “they had to be consistent with what was reported by the authority.”
“I do not know what the minister based his decisions on. As an epidemiologist, I consider that the objective of epidemiology is to show the dynamics of the epidemic curve. So when patients are excluded for administrative reasons, the projection that one can make of the curve is altered and the dynamics of the epidemic “, Acevedo affirmed, according to T13.
Data they did not know “where they got it from”
Araos focused on this mechanism used by Minister Mañalich, acknowledging that they were told “that it was data by commune, but we did not know where they got it from.”
“I assumed it was from Epivigila, but I would not have been surprised to find 3 or 4 systems; it is what I would do in any case, then it remains the best. But looking back, I do know that Epidemiology generated data from Epivigila”, He says.
It was with the arrival of Paris that the Minsal chose to “copy or imitate” the DEIS reports for daily reports.
Regarding the number of deaths, it was decided to set up a data structure in coordination with the Civil Registry, which in the opinion of Araos is “super complex, we had an avalanche of data, in a system that had strengths and weaknesses such as not having a computer system for medical death certificates in real time, a Civil Registry that he filled out by hand and a citizenry eager to have yesterday’s data.
Criticisms of the “plateau” and the “new normal”
In another part of the statement, Araos criticizes that the Minsal authorities used the term “plateau” of cases.
“Many said that it worked, that the fans were good. That does not mean that it was done well; regardless of everything, we have 16 thousand deceased,” he declares.
“Looking back, I think it would have been more appropriate to implement an equally powerful response in both areas (hospital capacity and traceability and isolation), but it is speculative,” he added.
Later he returned to criticize the concept of “new normal”, assuring that “I think it was a misinterpretation, they thought – many people, not just the authority – that it was more controlled than it was.”
[ad_2]
