February has been marked by the sharp rise in cases that developed in the country, where, according to health authorities, the peak of infections was experienced on February 11. This, after the delivery of the daily figures of Covid-19, where Chile had more than 45 thousand cases per day.
As established The MercuryComparing this wave with the previous ones, the scenario of demand for hospitalizations in critical beds remains stable, with a number that borders on a thousand patients in that situation. Three times less than in the second wave of infections, despite the fact that the country currently exceeds the number of daily cases by four times.
Despite being controlled, because the majority of the adult population is vaccinated, there is a group that is not. This means that children under five years of age have been hit with the Omicron variant, since, in recent weeks, this group has rapidly increased the number of hospitalizations in Intensive Care Units (ICU), who have come to exceed 223 in the last week. Which translates into an increase of six times what was achieved in any previous week of the pandemic.
According to data from the Department of Statistics and Health Information, of the more than 727,000 children between three and five years of age who can access the vaccine, only about 60% have already received the first dose, while more than 285,000 , they have not even started their immunization process.
According to what was reported by the Minsal, in these last six weeks, the hospitalization of 676 children under five years of age in the ICU has been detailed, which means 27% of all admissions reported since the start of the pandemic on this group. . Along the same lines, not only has the admission of minors to the ICU increased, but the level of infections has also experienced a substantial increase, where 27,769 cases of Covid-19 are in children under five years of age. A third of the total consigned since the arrival of the coronavirus in the country.
in conversation with The Mercurythe former president of the Chilean Society of Pediatrics (Sochipe) Francisco Moraga, stressed that most are not exposed to complications, but that, in any case, the increase is a warning sign.
“Most are still mild-type symptoms, which happen at home with few symptoms, but we are seeing more and more hospitalizations begin to appear and that is synonymous with seriousness,” he said.
“Children are the most susceptible group that is left now, because of the adult population, the percentages of vaccination are quite important. So, children are the niche that is left for the virus to be able to stay active. That is why it is so important to accelerate vaccination in children, and that there is hardly a vaccine for children under 3 years of age, to advance in that too, ”he added.
Along the same lines, the president of the Medical Association for Prevention, Humberto Soriano, also called for speeding up the vaccination process for the age group.
“As we saw in Europe and the United States, children are being more affected because Omicron is much more contagious. I have never had so many infected patients, with at least 20 times more than what we saw last year. Now, in the vast majority of cases, it’s just a cold,” she said.
“What happens is that since there are so many infected children, obviously many end up hospitalized,” he concluded.
