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The National Institute of Health released the seroprevalence results for four cities in the country, including Bucaramanga. It was confirmed that in the capital of Santander, Covid-19 has so far affected 28 to 36% of its inhabitants.
In the study, 22 thousand 93 Colombians participated in 10 cities of the country, of this total 18 thousand 55 are general population and 4 thousand 38 are health workers. This second preliminary report shows that, for example, in a city like Bogotá, out of every ten people, three were infected; in Cúcuta, four out of ten, while in Villavicencio and Bucaramanga, three out of ten were infected.
In the capital of Santander, 1,447 randomly chosen citizens and 380 health professionals were sampled. Although the latest report from the Ministry of Health indicates that 26,620 people have been infected in the city, according to the seroprevalence study, it is estimated that about 191,000 have been infected.
When analyzing the figures, Martha Lucia Ospina, director of the INS, explained that the variations from one city to another show that the epidemic in Colombia is heterogeneous and has different rates of occurrence. “What we are seeing is we have different epidemic moments, there are cities with greater affectation than others. It was to be expected and that is why we have ten different cities that represent ten different regions, which means, for example, in the case of Leticia is that this city was seriously affected by an epidemic practically imported from Brazil, while Bogotá is still on its plateau and has a percentage of affectation of 30 percent ”.
The results of the seroprevalence study are also not related to vaccination and are not used for any prioritization of cities for vaccination, because it is carried out by population groups at risk and it is done this way because the first objective of this is to reduce the mortality.
Regarding the so-called herd immunity, the concept that applies is that of herd immunity or the number of infections expected in a certain population to find the stability of an epidemic. “For Covid-19 it was calculated that more or less 70% would be the percentage of the population in which the epidemic naturally slows its spread, however, this is not an exact number, nor a fixed number, infections can continue to occur even above of that percentage of affectation ”
Regarding the accounts that some people do, trying to extrapolate the results of the cities published to the whole country, the director clarified: “At this moment it is not possible to draw conclusions for all of Colombia, results should not be extrapolated on partial data. The sample calculated by DANE is probabilistic and when the results of the 10 cities are obtained, with final statistical analyzes, the level of involvement of the entire country will be estimated ”.
Finally, the INS affirmed that it is in the process of obtaining resources to be able to carry out a new cycle of the Seroprevalence Study in 10 other cities of the country. A phase 2 of the study.
The seroprevalence studies are undoubtedly the greatest exercise of transparency that a country can do and they complement very well with the Surveillance System, which, no matter how good, as in the case of Colombia, it does not achieve in Covid-19 Sensitivities higher than 30%, due to the large number of asymptomatic patients, in addition, surveillance systems are not registration systems and do not seek to record all existing cases, it is not their objective.
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