“If the coronavirus reaches the hills of Valparaiso, we are likely to experience a tragedy.” This is the urgent diagnosis of the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Diagnostics and Research of the School of Medicine of the University of Valparaiso, Rodrigo Cruz, regarding the threat of Covid-19 in the city-port.
While the Government has insisted that the situation in the Valparaiso Region is careful, to date this concern has not resulted in a tightening of health measures as requested by parliamentarians and mayors in the area. These requirements are added by the UV expert, who reiterates his call on the health authorities to urgently decree a dynamic quarantine in that commune and, also in Viña del Mar and San Antonio, for at least two weeks.
“Like Valparaiso, these other two cities also exhibit a very complicated reality, with increasing numbers of coronavirus infected, so a measure like the one noted also needs to be made effective in both. I understand that quarantines cause additional problems, but I think the priority today is to keep people from dying. And if we don’t act in line, the deaths are going to continue to increase there exponentially,” says Dr Cruz.
“Nice place to stay”
To date, the Valparaiso Region is the area of the country with the highest number of infected (2,230) and deceased (48) after the Metropolitan, making it the new focus of the pandemic in Chile. In the last 24 hours, he recorded a total of 114 new cases and four more deaths.
According to the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Diagnostics and Research at the School of Medicine at the University of Valparaiso, “today in the region we are having a deceased every less than forty hours, but I fear that, as we go, there will be more deaths and in a shorter time,” endorsed in the context of family health centers , clinics and local hospitals especially in the communes of San Antonio, Valparaíso and Viña del Mar, where more and more infected people arrive every day, particularly older adults.
“If the coronavirus spreads widely in the hills of Valparaiso, populations and shots are likely to experience a tragedy of proportions, because the characteristics that these present – are tens of thousands of houses glued together, with reduced access to basic services and with a large number of elderly people inside, many of whom have mobility problems or are prostrate – are an ideal breeding ground for the virus responsible for the virus responsible for the pandemic” , indicated the also medical infectologist and master in Epidemiology.
Meanwhile, the doctor and teacher of the School of Medicine of the UV, Aníbal Vivaceta, expert in the fight against infectious diseases, says that establishing a sanitary cordon on Avenida España – the main artery that binds Valparaiso with Viña del Mar – is a measure that has no greater effect and whose implementation wastes the already scarce energy and epidemiological surveillance personnel that performs functions in those cities.
“According to the maydeological report of 22 May, 51% of people with enough symptoms to be hospitalized had a fever. That is, if you go through a customs office like that, and all the factors of bad temperature intake (environmental thermometers, bad technique, etc.) would be passing half the cases that, eye, are the most serious. They are wasting valuable time and energy, which should focus on trying to locate and block the maximum number of active transmission chains,” Vivaceta says.
Other measures
Cruz also focused on the collaboration of citizens in combating the pandemic. “We don’t get anything out of it by increasing the number of beds or fans, if the number of patients continues to increase. Prevention needs to be emphasized, and that’s what people need to listen to, be responsible and isolate themselves as much as they can right now,” he says.
In the same vein, the infecting physician believes that the authorities should go one step further and ensure access to proper hygiene and hand washing, which – in his opinion – “has not happened in practice”.
“No portable sinks have been installed on the main streets of the region, at the fair of Avenida Argentina in Valparaiso, for example, or near other free fairs and markets”, who in passing, it extends its concern to the reality experienced in camps and drought-affected areas.
“Another thing happens in vulnerable populations, where they don’t have enough water to be able to exercise handwashing, which is so simple and effective,” he concludes.
