Between January and April 2022, the National Center for Diagnosis and Reference (CNDR) carried out 40,581 PCR tests to confirm or rule out SAR-CoV-2, however, only 816 of these were positive, according to the Ministry of Health (Minsa). ) in recently published epidemiological bulletins.
The low positivity of cases diagnosed through PCR tests occurs despite the predominance of the omicron variant of concern, which according to reports from the World Health Organization (WHO) is currently the most contagious and the one with the highest prevalence. According to the Minsa report, of the total tests carried out, only 816 were positive, which is equivalent to 2%.
The Minsa report does not detail whether these PCR tests -limited since the start of the pandemic- were carried out on people suspected of having the virus or if they were carried out on citizens who paid for them to travel to other countries. In Nicaragua, the CNDR is the only institution authorized to carry them out and their cost is 150 dollars.
In February there were more tests and more cases of covid-19
The epidemiological bulletins indicate that the largest number of PCR tests in this first four-month period was carried out in February. Consequently, the Minsa reported a greater number of positive cases, which are attributable to omicron as indicated by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), but which the authorities do not openly attribute.
“Nicaragua, as in the other Central American countries, has seen a peak in transmission in recent weeks, starting in December, with a clear predominance of omicron,” said Dr. Sylvain Aldighieri, incident manager at the end of February. for covid-19 from PAHO.
Of the 40,581 PCR tests carried out in these four months, 10,264 were carried out in January, 15,612 in February, 9,692 in March and 5,013 in April. The weekly average of tests carried out was 2387.
Of the Central American region, Nicaragua is the country that tests its population the least. The number of tests carried out until the end of 2021 was known for the first time, when the epidemiological bulletins for that year were released. As detailed in the epidemiological bulletin number 40 -which runs from October 5 to 12- until then in Nicaragua they had carried out 128,163 tests, now the total rose to 193,508.
Meanwhile, in Costa Rica 3.34 million tests have been carried out, in Panama 5.94 million, in El Salvador 1.58 million, even in Belize, which has a small population, it carried out almost three times more tests than Nicaragua. The limitations in access to tests have been a complaint by the Nicaraguan medical personnel who face the pandemic blindly as they cannot rule out the disease by this means.
Last April, the director of PAHO, Carissa Etienne, recommended to the nations of the Americas that “tests must be available to everyone, everywhere, to prevent new outbreaks and to prepare our health systems if cases rise. ”.
Minsa continues without reporting mortality from pneumonia
In the epidemiological bulletins, the Minsa continues to exclude information related to deaths from pneumonia, which in the first two years of the pandemic have been related to covid-19. At the beginning of the year, an analysis of CONFIDENTIALbased on the brief epidemiological report of the Minsa, which is read every Monday by the state spokesperson and vice president, Rosario Murillo, revealed that between January 18 and February 7, 2022, there were 21 deaths from pneumonia. It is unknown how many deaths have occurred since then.
The Minsa document only details the weekly curve of pneumonia cases in the country, according to it in the first four months of the year there was a slight decrease compared to 2021. Last year there was a record of 27,060 cases of pneumonia and this year 23,264 occurred. Despite this difference, in the weeks in which the cases of covid-19 increased according to the official report, there was also a slight increase in pneumonia. In February alone, 6,276 cases of this disease and 396 of covid-19 were identified.
Currently, in Nicaragua there is a downward trend of covid-19. The Minsa admitted a slight increase between January 18 and February 22, but since then the cases have been decreasing. This Tuesday, 40 more cases and one death were reported. And despite the fact that the official information has been highly questioned due to its opacity and contrast with the humanitarian tragedy left by the pandemic, there is no other data that allows verifying the situation of the pandemic.
The COVID-19 Citizen Observatory, which carried out independent monitoring during 2020 and 2021, announced that it will no longer publish figures on suspicious infections and deaths due to the lack of capacity to collect information due to fear of reprisals from the population and due to the “normalization ” that was imposed in the country due to the “insufficient, distorted and late information” of the authorities in relation to the pandemic.
