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Although Bogotá maintains a low rate of infections, the daily positives went from 800 to 1,658 last Thursday. Experts say that a new peak will come after Easter. Its magnitude will depend on the behavior that citizens have had these days.
The situation that several of the main cities of the country are going through shows that the third peak of the pandemic is approaching and although in recent weeks Bogotá has maintained a low number of active cases and occupation of intensive care units (ICU), in the In recent days, the figures for some indicators have begun to rise, so the new wave is expected to arrive after Easter.
The first is the contagion rate (Rt); that is, the possibility that one person infects another. Ideally, it is below 1 and the city is, as it is at 0.94. But localities such as Usaquén, Puente Aranda and La Candelaria attract attention, where this indicator is above 1.1, with an evident increase in the last month.
Something similar happens with the positivity in the PCR tests, because in the last month it went from 8% to 15%, and it has been seen in the figures, because despite the fact that the average daily infections in the capital was over 800 cases and last Thursday it climbed to 1,656, approaching the 2,000 barrier, with Usaquén, Suba and Kennedy being the towns with the most reports.
For Leonardo García, president of the Medical College of Bogotá and Cundinamarca, it is imminent that the third wave will arrive in the city in the coming weeks. “We are in a very open stage and that is going to generate more contagion. It should also be taken into account that the level of people who have not been infected is very high; in fact, we believe that it is between 45% and 60%, so we could have more peaks in the coming months ”.
Likewise, he points out that he is concerned about what is happening in cities like Barranquilla, where more people in serious situations would be arriving, compared to the other two peaks of the pandemic. “We also have to see cases like Cartagena, where it is believed that 70% of people have already been infected and have reached a strong third wave. There is another uncertainty and these are the new strains that we cannot say anything about, because the level of study is very low, ”says García.
In this regard, Luis Jorge Hernández, an expert in public health at the University of the Andes, believes that much more attention should be paid to the confirmation of the first case of death of a person infected with the Brazilian strain. “The important thing is that the genomic search is carried out and the necessary measures are taken; for example, Mexico restricted flights from Brazil, but it is also required that the number of daily PCR tests be maintained, that there be epidemiological surveillance and that PRASS be applied ”.
Both experts consider that the follow-up will be essential, especially in asymptomatic cases, since it is expected that the fifteen days following Easter will begin to increase the cases, but with different conditions than those that had been occurring, as a report from the University de los Andes indicates that infections tend to rise in the youngest. In Bogotá, the incidence rate is already higher in those under thirty than in those over sixty years of age, and for the most part it is due to the fact that they are ultimately the ones with the greatest mobility.
For now, the only possibility to stop the pandemic is to guarantee herd immunity, but vaccination in the country continues at a slow pace, so the conditions in which the third peak will occur in Bogotá will depend on citizen behavior at Easter. season in which almost half a million people went on a trip. For this reason, for Diego Rosselli, a public health researcher at the Javeriana University, the key is to have avoided crowds or parties.
Consider that if people followed the recommendations of being in nature destinations, with distance and only with people with whom they live in the same home, they avoided religious ceremonies in closed places and maintained the main self-care measures, such as washing of hands, the constant use of the mask and remained in open and ventilated places, the impact of the new peak could be less. “At a greater distance, eat separately, avoid meeting to sing and keep the mask, the lower the risk.”
Hernández believes that the public learned from what happened in December, while for García the role of the EPS in surveillance and control will be fundamental. For now, the city is committed to continuing with the mass vaccination of those over seventy years of age and in the coming weeks, according to the dose delivered by the National Government, to continue in an accelerated manner with those over sixty years of age and with comorbidities. , in order to guarantee that those most vulnerable to entering an ICU are immunized as soon as possible.
Although the city has some 2,500 ICU beds, the urgency is that the occupation does not reach the levels it reached in January, when there was talk of a possible collapse, as this would represent the return of measures such as the peak and cedula or sectorized quarantines . The third wave cannot be avoided, but the public can guarantee that it is not as serious as the one that took place three months ago.
