“We have been monitoring the pandemic since mid-March, we have participated not only in the Covid 19 sub-table of data that formed the Ministry of Science, to the wing of the Social Bureau, also of a collaborative project with the Ministry of Science, where there are three national research centres, which is a set of state-funded centres, which we have been trying to monitor the pandemic since mid-March , trying to understand impact, not only in the population, but also in the health,” explained Tomás Pérez Acle, Deputy Director of the Science and Life Foundation and professor of the Interdisciplinary Center of Neuroscience of Valparaiso, to justify why the urgent call of more than a thousand experts who asked the government, through a public letter, reinforce the measures in order to avoid a national catastrophe due to the fault of the coronavirus.
In an interview with Radio Universe, he noted that “what we’ve seen is that quarantine isn’t working. Not because it is not a good measure, it is the best measure we can have to fight with the pandemic, the countries that have managed to overcome this virus, which have already passed first wave such as New Zealand, Australia, Iceland, South Korea, among others, are countries that efficiently quarantined, quarantined quickly and took advantage of that period to go for mass testing ,trying to identify all the infected, all and all, so that once they are infected they are infected, force them to quarantine.”
“Why isn’t quarantine working in Chile? Because we have very high mobility. We can see through an anonymous tracking of cell phones that the remaining mobility, that is, how much of the trips that existed between March 9 and 15, which is the week of control, are maintained a week from May 18 to 24, which is last week, of the second quarantine. Here we see that around 68% to 70% of trips are maintained on average in MRI, so quarantine doesn’t work,” he warned.
“The number we had yesterday of infected people is dramatic, (…) yesterday was the day that we had the most infected and that catapulted us to the first places in the world. If we compare for everything from the pandemic, the correct way to look at it is per million inhabitants and when we look at it like this, we are still in the top 4 or 5 countries in the world, at the level of number of infected people that we have given the small population of the country. Given the small population of the country we are too high, we cannot compare ourselves to Russia, the United States or Mexico, they have much more population than we do. So we have to understand that for the small country we are, with 18 or 19 million inhabitants, we have a number of infected too high. In epidemiological terms, we would say that active contagions versus the population, it is too high, that means that every time we go out on the street and interact with others and we do not keep social distances in any situation, there is a high probability of contagion and that is what should catch our attention.”
“As early as March – and you can search online – we warned that the collapse of the health system was inevitable and that unfortunately it came between the third week of May and the second week of June. Why is this? (…) (because) there are important numbers to understand in this pandemic and that is that approximately 30% of people who become infected with the virus, is asymptomatic; 55% of people who become infected will have minor symptoms, (…) then we talk about 85% of people who are living their lives normally and who are infecting for 15 and up to 20 days. So we’re just catching 15% of people who have major symptoms and leading them to require hospitalization,” he added.
Lethality
“Once the last bed is over, the lethality, i.e. the number of people dying from the virus, according to the number of infected people we know, should be in the order of 2.5%. We immediately moved on to 2.5% lethality and would shoot ourselves from the figures we’re getting to know that according to the government they’re in order of 1%,” Perez added.
About the evolution of the virus he said: “What should we expect? Unfortunately bad things, you have to say it with property. When the last bed is finished not only in RM and in the rest of the health services in the country, we will reach lethality of the order of 2.5%, that will be instantaneous. The thing to fight is not to go up to the next threshold. Countries that do well have lethality of between 2.5 and 10%, that is, they are countries that are doing well, they are not countries that do it wrong, the countries that overcame the virus, that passed the firstare under the lethality of 2.4% overall.”
“Here’s New Zealand, Australia, Israel, South Korea, the rest of the countries are about 2.5%, that’s next level, from 2.5% to 10%, and the next level is the one we don’t want to be, which is when you exceed the health system and you get to the level of 10 to 15%, and here we don’t find third world countries , we find high-income countries, we’re talking about England, France, Italy, Spain, absolutely first-class countries,” he said.
Total quarantine and health census
Pérez also referred to how difficult it is today to achieve traceability of contagion given to their large number: “Traceability means that when a person reports infected, we can follow that person’s story and identify everyone he had contact with (…) then we are able to trace the history of each contact to the past.”
“Today with the level of contagion is practically impossible. Today, the only alternative is to quickly get into a lookdown, into a real quarantine. If you remember the China mission to Italy, a few months ago, the head of China’s mission in Italy, the first thing he said is that it could not be the government’s irresponsibility because of Italy’s level of mobility, it was similar to ours, and on the basis of the recommendations it went into full close and lowered the order of up to 20 to 30% mobility. And that is inevitably done with a daily curfew,” he said.
“You have to understand that there are people who, if they don’t have help from the government, they are starving. It is important, quarantine does not work in the same way in Vitacura and La Pintana are completely opposite, in La Pintana there is overcrowding there is poverty, people must go out on the street to eat,” raised the aid that the state must give and pointed to the need to perform a “health census, go out on the street with an army of volunteers at the end of rapid testing”, , let’s forget the PCR, it’s super interesting, but it’s too slow for the requirement. We have to go out on the street to do a health census, hopefully with volunteers, hopefully house with house. We must find all the infected in the shortest possible time, otherwise it will be inevitable that we will be in
