Chile and Panama have  highest covid contagion rates

Panama  ranks behind only Chile in the Americas for the number of cases of Covid-19 for every 100,000 inhabitants.

A report by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) reveals that Panama has a rate of 927.7 infected per 100,000 inhabitants, which places it in second place among the five countries in the Americas that have the highest incidence rate, even above the rate regional average, which is 570.1 per 100,000 inhabitants.

Chile leads(1,584.5), Panama (927.7), Peru (908.6), the United States (862.6), and Brazil (742.2). The rest of the countries are below the average for the region.

According to the report, the position that Panama occupies is directly related to the fact that it is among the countries with the highest number of tests carried out, together with Chile and Peru, and, therefore, have the capacity to identify a high proportion of cases in the population.

The PAHO document also details how the death rate – which is not the same as the case fatality rate – is increasing day after day in the country. The mortality rate is calculated with the total population of the country, and the lethality rate is established only with the infected population.

Dr Jorge Luis Prosperi, Public Health expert affirms that today there are already more than a thousand cases for every 100,000 inhabitants on average, which he described as “disturbing

The specialist stated that the virus is circulating freely throughout the community and every time a person goes out he meets it. “The other thing is that our culture, that we want to play the virus alive, is not very good and does not help. We are not aware and people do not comply with the sanitary and distancing measures ”, he said.

Despite this scenario, Prosperi is one of those who believe that there is still time to stop the escalation of cases and deaths, as long as “we stay focused and each one responsibly does his part.”