Colombia could reach a little more than 40,000 daily infections of covid-19 as a result of the increase in cases in different regions of the country.
(Covid in Colombia: 39 deaths and 63,608 active cases, as of January 4).
This was stated by the Deputy Minister of Public Health and Provision of Services, Germán Escobar, in an interview with RCN News, when referring to the health situation in the coming days.
“In the next two or three weeks we are going to have a very important increase in cases, we hope that over the next first and second week we will see a decrease. We could reach a little more than 40,000 cases daily”, the vice minister mentioned.
According to the Ministry of Health, omicron has been shown to be a variant 5 to 10 times more contagious than delta, the evidence also seems to suggest that it has less severity, an increasingly consistent finding.
High contagiousness can have a high impact on public health, even at low severity, due to the volume of infected, especially among unvaccinated people.
(Ihu: new covid variant with several mutations, but less threatening).
A little before the appearance of the omicron was reported in Colombia, on June 26, 2021, the highest number of infections by covid-19 in the entire country was registered, with 33,594 new cases. According to the health portfolio, on January 1 of this year 12,415 cases were reported.
Regarding this situation, the Ministry of Health and Social Protection has been emphatic in pointing out that vaccination is the most effective tool to mitigate the new wave of COVID-19 infections, caused by the rapid spread of the omicron variant.
Recent studies of the entity show that people who have not been vaccinated have a 72.3 times higher risk of severe covid compared to those who did.
Fernando Ruiz, Minister of Health and Social Protection, has mentioned on several occasions that vaccination points are all over the country and people can be vaccinated in any city: “They can do it wherever they visit on these holidays and vacations and they can even consume some alcohol in moderation and have no problems with vaccination, so there is no excuse.”
In Colombia, more than 83 million vaccines have been purchased, of which 63 million have been applied, that is, there are almost 20 million vaccines available to be applied, for which the ministry assures that “there are no excuses not to get vaccinated”.
HEALTH UNIT
