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During the day of this Wednesday the Minister of Health, Enrique Paris, was consulted about the figures delivered this Tuesday by Espacio Público through a report, an instance where the minister was told that the body would have expressed through said text that the positivity figures would be artificial, which was denied this afternoon by the organization.
During the consultations of the daily balance, Paris was notably upset and summoned Espacio Público to make this accusation before the courts: “I challenge this center to make the accusation,” he pointed out this Wednesday morning.
Due to the above, from Espacio Público they issued a statement stating that they regret “the tone with which the health authority decided to refer to our report. On other occasions, when these reports gave rise to debate, we made efforts to offer additional explanations that would allow us to maintain a constructive dialogue focused on public policies ”.
“In this case, however, We cannot be held responsible for expressions that we have not used or for interpretations that we have not made. We invite the community to review the text of our report and form their own opinion “they added.
The report
In the statement they also clarified that in one of the sections of their own report issued this Tuesday they carried out “an evaluation of the positivity indicators with the intention of suggesting an improvement in the protocols that regulate the ‘Active Case Search’ (BAC) and to argue, based on the evidence, in favor of the advisability of adopting the health decisions of the ‘Step by Step Plan’ on the basis of the positivity index that excludes the tests performed by BAC ”.
“We believe that it is the safest way to continue with the deconfinement process, while the current protocols are not refined to ensure uniformity in the implementation of the BAC”, they mentioned.
Along these lines, they added that “the positivity index, defined as the fraction of PCR tests that is positive in a given territory and period, groups together information from two very different strategies. The first considers the usual way of conducting tests, focused on people who come to a medical center because they have symptoms. The second, corresponding to the BAC, consists of a strategy developed since August to go out and look for people who could be infected ”.
“From our work of interviews with mayors and local health authorities, We were able to verify that the BAC strategy was translated on certain occasions in carrying out tests in squares, terminals or other public places where, even when they are in high incidence areas, the probability of finding a positive result is lower than in close contacts or exposed population “they argued.
Likewise, they declared that, in line with the above, they found “great differences between the positivity used to decide advances in the ‘Step by Step Plan’ (based on all the tests carried out, total positivity in the following) and the positivity which is obtained excluding the BAC cases (tables 0a and 0b of our report). While in Tarapacá the total positivity is 5.7%, if BAC cases are excluded it rises to 18% ”.
“In Bío-Bío, on the other hand, the difference is less than 20% (6.8% vs. 8%). This disparity between regions suggests that the criteria being used for the active search for cases vary greatly from one region to another.Therefore, it seems prudent to consider the positivity excluding BAC cases for health decision making, 18% in Tarapacá and 8% in Biobío ”, they pointed out.
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