The flu cases -which had increased during the first fortnight of March- decreased during the last two weeks, while the coronavirus circulation remains lowaccording to the latest report from the Situation Room of the Ministry of Health.
“The flu cases are declining this past week; it is a fairly common behavior of respiratory viruses, but it is difficult to predict what will happen considering that it circulated at a time of year that had never circulated before“, told Télam Analía Rearte, national director of Epidemiology and Strategic Information.
Rearte explained that “in other years when the first outbreak of cases occurred at the end of May or beginning of June, we had more indications about how it was going to behave, but now we are waiting to see what will happen with this one and with all the respiratory viruses. “.
In relation to Covid-19, the official and specialist indicated that “we are at a time of very low circulation, but whenever we talk about coronavirus we must be cautious because we learned that a new variant may appear that can quickly increase cases.”
However, he stressed that “the good thing is that we have high vaccination coverage.”
Since last Monday, the Ministry implemented a new transition strategy to integrate the surveillance of Covid-19 to that of acute respiratory diseases of presumed viral origin.
It was defined that the diagnosis of Covid-19 will be prioritized in people with respiratory disease who belong to the following groups: over 50 years of age and with risk conditions; special populations that reside, work or attend areas that, due to their characteristics, present a higher risk of transmission or generation of outbreaks; Those who have a history of travel in the last 14 days to a region in which a variant of interest or concern is circulating; people with serious illness (hospitalized), and deceased.
In all these cases, swabbing and notification is mandatory.
Rearte indicated that The Ministry will use different strategies to monitor if the cases rise: “On the one hand, through the surveillance of cases of people over 50 years of age who are going to continue to be swabbed universally; notification of hospitalized and deceased people is also mandatory and these are indicators that we are going to control and evaluate, “he said.
“On the other hand, each province will implement two or three outpatient monitoring centers that will work in the same way as before, testing one hundred percent of mild cases and virus monitoring will also be carried out in wastewater, ”he added.
Also, he indicated that we continue to observe what happens at the international level. “The first thing is if new variants arise; there are countries that are in different stages but it is a time of decrease in cases and deaths worldwide,” she said.
“This in no way implies that we are relaxed; We know that we are entering winter with a population that is fairly immunized against Covid-19 but very susceptible to other respiratory viruses,” he said.
The Situation Room report also detailed that “to date (March 13), 106 cases of the Omicron BA.2 variant have been detected, 22 in people with a history of international travel and 84 cases are under investigation.”
“The provinces of residence of the cases correspond to the City of Buenos Aires, the province of Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, San Luis and Tucumán. The cases with a history of international travel come from Brazil, Uruguay, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Switzerland, Spain, England, Turkey and Egypt,” the document said.
