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The model that was being applied until yesterday in the Metropolitan Region is unprecedented and is not adapted to the tracing of those that other countries have used. This morning the government recapitulated that, reporting that when looking at what was done outside they did not see 100% adaptable examples. It is true that many times it was said that they observed South Korea, where they carried out massive tests and isolated contagions and contacts -and they did not do gigantic total quarantines, they repeat-, but under conditions quite difficult to replicate here: too expensive in money in its initial phases and with a very different social culture.
New Zealand is often mentioned as a bastion, but – stresses an authority of the Executive – closing one or two islands for x time is not the same, and when it opens it is exposed to the virus again. Germany, says this same version, may be more similar, but Germany is Germany and Chile is Chile, and in addition there the confinement was at times more pronounced. Spain and Italy, not to mention. United States, less.
Weighing that and the inputs of experts and specific reports (there were even modeling by some scientists who collaborate with the Data Table), the government opted for dynamic, strategic or partial quarantines. The same version stresses that these data pointed out that it was possible to contain the viral spread with the same impact as a lockdown, but without paying the priceless price of having the metropolis closed.
“We keep our most powerful tool for the best opportunity, so it won’t wear out. It is like a scalpel: it only works well when it is sharp, not when it is already blunt ”, they illustrate in the government. But the infectologist Claudia Cortés -Academic from the University of Chile and Vice President of the Chilean Society of Infectology– asserts that the model “evidently failed, we tripled the infections, and for some reason this has not worked anywhere in the world ”.
“There was little analysis regarding the functioning of Santiago as a whole, more than the sum of independent delimited territories, that is, the communes. The communes of the capital were treated as if they were the regions of the country, with wide and clear limits, when this is not the case, the mobility of people within the city of Santiago, and therefore their interconnection, is immense, ”he says. the doctor Manuel Najera, Epidemiology specialist and teacher at the Universidad del Desarrollo.
According to him, “it seems that this element was not included, or was not weighed on its merit, in the decisions.” This is what has been constantly demanded: that no matter how much a commune was closed, in others the people continued to mobilize without the pressure of the authority, transferring the virus and spreading it throughout the city. And in those that were confined, there have been plenty of examples of people who did not respect the measures, in addition to the permits that were fired.
Dr. Cortés stresses that “people were transported from one commune to another, and thus, quarantining half of a commune, half communes, was something quite absurd. The streets cannot be a limit and we always said that it was very unreasonable to quarantine communes split in half. ”
To address this factor, in government have chosen to tighten the requirements for safe conducts and permits.
One of the maxims for this to work is to confine, test, detect, isolate and trace. But according to the doctor Catterina Ferreccio, a member of the COVID-19 Advisory Council, the chain is faltering at a crucial point. “The most important thing about our systematic failure – we are not in the worst of worlds either – is have the longest hands in primary care“Because this is where the population can best be assisted, he says.
Explains that “the clinics are a health network that depends on the Minsal and the municipal system, and this network is throughout Chile and reaches the last inhabitant. After the office is the rural post, there is no Chilean who does not have one within reach. And there they have the family medical record of everyone who lives in a house. ” He insists that these health personnel should be sent more supplies, “test kits and support them with as much material as possible.”
The reason for this, he graphs, is that “when you close an area, you confine it and do nothing else, it greatly increases the transmission within houses and condominiums. You have to close, go find the positive cases, get them and their closest contacts out of the house. That way, when you open a commune again, you have fewer infections. ” And it hasn’t worked so far because “The field team factor is very poor and insufficient, we do not have the capacities, there are few personnel and the newly hired does not have enough experience”.
Álvaro Erazo, former Minister of Health and member of the Covid-19 advisory council, agrees: “If primary care is not in good standing with the seremis and the municipalities, which is the local strategic unit, the possibility of traceability of cases, isolation and Quarantine of them will not operate well and we will undoubtedly allow the virus to continue circulating. “
Dr. Najera is clear that “early success was affected by the situation observed exclusively in the eastern sector of the capital, and the result was moderately positive in Punta Arenas and Araucanía. What pushed the authority’s discourse to change prematurely towards the ‘new normality’ and this is the main message to the population, to return to commerce, to the mall (Apumanque as an icon), which again confuses the main premise that is the Stay at home to avoid more infections ”.
Erazo believes that the controversial concept “has been a factor that has not helped the purpose and the authority itself has to some extent recognized it, I think there is a rectification.” And before that he emphasizes that “today it is very clear that the only indicator to make any decision regarding relaxing measures are health indicators”, but that “it has to go from the command of social protection networks and some mechanism of transfer of resources to through the municipalities, some subsidy. A social quarantine. “
The government explained this morning that the failure that was committed was confusing it with the message, because what was sought was to install the idea that it would return to a “new normal” state later, not immediately.
And that the total quarantine, as they had considered, they planned to delay it further towards winter. But for the same reason, in the Palace they warn that as the lockdown that comes into effect today, partial legal confinements may be retaken. That some communes go out and others do not.
Here is a factor that is not medical but social, almost idiosyncratic if you like, difficult to express through the mouth of an authority without being misunderstood. That the man from Santiago has behaved in a very different way from the Chilean and Chilean regions. In the government they maintain that if the failure was exclusively attributable to the message of new normal, because then it is not understood that in areas like Osorno and Punta Arenas, where they heard the same speech, the situation is not as dramatic as in the capital.
In something the minister Jaime Mañalich touched on this point in the interview published today in La Tercera: “For reasons that do not correspond to me to judge, I think that the behavior of the people, once there was a lifting of the restrictions in the RM, was not the desirable one. There was a liberation in terms of throwing parties in departments, clandestine, which meant an enormous risk potential, and that led me, before the cases began, to make a declaration of war that everything was at stake. in the battle for Santiago, until the numbers endorsed it and we got to the actions we are in today ”.
And, speaking of messages and speeches, today or tomorrow the government will launch the first phase of what could be a broad campaign that seeks to inoculate the idea that the measures must be complied with and be responsible. First it will launch on social media with video clips that are almost ready and other graphic tools. The plan is give it a week of shooting, and as it works, then launch a second phase in the media and with more complete audiovisual elements.
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