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Nicolás Maduro confirmed this Sunday that Venezuela is facing a second wave of the covid-19 virus, mainly due to the Brazilian variant. “It is a reality that Brazil is the greatest threat in the world and is affecting all neighbors”, he pointed.
He also announced that Easter will be this year again in radical quarantine. “We are going to two weeks of radical quarantine ”, He said. And it is that for a few days the reality in the neighboring country is undeniable in the face of the increase in cases.
The Perez family spent last Wednesday afternoon looking for a place to hospitalize the 68-year-old aunt who contracted COVID-19. It wasn’t until 7 pm that they got space in one of the clinics in the southeast of the Venezuelan capital.
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According to estimates by Imperial College London, which were released last week, up to 3,500 people would be adding to the uncertain local list of people infected with the virus each day. The Maduro regime, however, the most that it has reported, until last Saturday, has been 1,160 new cases, on that day.
In total, it has recognized only about 150,000 infections, since the first case was announced, just over a year ago. An under-registration has since been reported, but now it has become more apparent. Clinics and hospitals have reported in recent days a total occupation and, in some cases, having exceeded capacity.
Concern among Venezuelans about the increase in cases grows amid uncertainty. “We have spent a year in which at no time did the official spokesperson or the person responsible for carrying out health policies take the necessary provisions”, denounced, in conversation with EL TIEMPO, Jaime Lorenzo, executive director of Médicos Unidos de Venezuela (MUV).
At the beginning of the pandemic, this organization highlighted the “compromised” situation in which the country’s hospitals were found. A year later, they regret that the Maduro regime has not made the necessary purchases to assume the “continuous and efficient” supply of materials, for the care of covid-19 and other diseases.
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The consequences are regrettable. According to official figures, some 1,500 people have lost their lives in Venezuela due to this disease. However, only in one municipality in the state of Táchira, bordering Colombia, the mayor recognized 849 deaths from covid-19, which would represent more than half of the deaths admitted by the regime. This without counting that, among health personnel, the deceased amounted, until last Friday, to 369 people, according to MUV figures.
Brazilian strain?
In the first days of the month, Maduro confirmed the presence of the Brazilian strain of covid-19, for which he announced special prevention measures. “The problem is trying to find an explanation for a situation that got out of hand “, Lorenzo whipped. In his opinion, the regime would not have a clear characterization of the disease, as it would not be doing an adequate search.
“The search for cases is not asking, it is doing tests, and the test is the molecular test, the PCR, you would have to be covering the Venezuelan population in a very high percentage to say how many patients you have symptomatic and asymptomatic and with that you make socio-political or socioeconomic decisions ”, said the executive director of MUV.
Since the arrival of the pandemic in this country, it has been reported that the evidence is insufficient. At the beginning of this month, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) reiterated it, and reported that only 5 of the 24 Venezuelan states had direct access to the processing of PCR tests.
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More recently, however, lhe Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) recognized an improvement in the network and organization of the logistics of taking and sending samples in Venezuela, and reported a 600% increase in the use of this method, since January of this year, to exceed, on March 15, the 21,500 tests carried out.
Dangerous cocktail
In June 2020, Venezuela began to implement a method called 7×7, a week of radicalization of the quarantine, followed by a week of easing.
In December, however, Maduro made the quarantine more flexible throughout the month, something he repeated in Carnival week.
“We have been led to believe that the pandemic was under control and we observed how the regime irresponsibly promoted an open carnival throughout the country, which today is undoubtedly beginning to translate into new outbreaks of contagion,” warned the opposition Primero Justicia party. in a statement issued last Tuesday.
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“Since approximately October, we have been noticing, and it has become more evident in January, an internal migration of health personnel. They are not leaving the country, but they are looking for other sources of income and, therefore, they are withdrawing from the public health system, “said Lorenzo, who referred to poor wages and deplorable working conditions.
The specialist adds a fourth ingredient to the mix: the way in which vaccination is being carried out, without a plan known to all, just over a month after the first doses of Sputnik V arrived and began to be applied. .
The president of the National Academy of Medicine, Enrique López Loyo, assured that vaccination coverage against COVID-19 did not reach 5 percent last Friday, and estimated that, at this rate, herd immunization could be achieved in 2 years.
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ANDREINA ITRIAGO
EL TIEMPO correspondent
Caracas Venezuela)
