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The Espacio Público study center released this Friday a new report on the coronavirus pandemic facing our country, placing special emphasis on what happened in the Los Ríos region which went from being an example for the rest of the country, to being at its worst.
In the document that is named “Report on the evolution of the
covid-19 epidemic in Chile “ It lists the good that was done in the beginning in that area and the bad decisions that were made later.
What did Los Ríos do well during the first five months of the pandemic, largely avoiding the May-June outbreak that spread to the rest of the country?
“As for the successful strategies, Los Ríos set up 18 sampling points in the region in March and PCR samples were taken from close contacts, in order to quickly reach the contacts of close contacts already infected and thus cut the transmission chain there ”, highlights the study.
Along these lines, they highlight the importance of a programmed arm that allowed the region to multiply its early testing capacity by three. In parallel, the Austral University organized a surveillance plan with a “pool testing” system that allows the accumulation of ten samples in one.
Specifically, they add, the “testing pool” makes it possible to test more people among the groups at greatest risk “for example, workers in refrigerators, public transportation drivers, health workers, and it is a service that has also been used by companies ”.
What happened from August onwards to make the situation worse in Los Ríos?
Given its good indexes, in mid-July the Government decided to start implement the Step by Step plan in Los Ríos, putting the area directly in Initial Opening (Stage 4).
That would have translated into a sustained increase in cases, argues the aforementioned study center.
Moving average of daily cases and positivity since August
“There was no gradual opening plan, which could have caused an impression of liberation in the inhabitants of the main cities,” they maintain.
Faced with this situation, when the outbreak was evident and contagion levels exceeded 10 cases per day per 100,000 inhabitants, they reproach the authorities for not deciding to decree total confinement.
“At the end of September, and with a sustained increase in positivity, It happened that the region did not return to Quarantine but to Transition, without a significant reduction in mobility being observed, validating the idea that we have raised in other reports that people still divide the state of affairs between being in Quarantine and being out of Quarantine ”, they emphasize.
For Espacio Público, the impression of the inhabitants of the area is that in Transition there would have been no social sanction nor more supervision of those who did not comply with the rules.
In parallel, the regrowth was influenced by the other restriction measure, a sanitary cordon around the Los Ríos region, got up on October 23.
Main conclusions
In conclusion, Public Space warns that “Once an outbreak is confirmed, it is best to return to Quarantine as soon as possible, not progressively or late”.
Therefore, they assure that “if the confinement had been implemented at the beginning of October, perhaps contagions and deaths would have been avoided, and the economic cost of the quarantine could have been lower.”
In this scenario, the executive president of Espacio Público, Diego Pardow, when the Step by Step plan works backwards, it seems that it does not manage to reduce mobility with the same effectiveness as it increases it when the communes advance.
“This seems to be what explains what happened in the Los Ríos region, because the stages of phase 3 were effectively reversed to phase 2, but the decrease that occurred between phase 3 and phase 2 was very small in terms of of mobility ”, deepens Pardow.
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