Panama virus positivity rate over 30% for seven weeks

The positivity rate in the diagnostic tests of Covid-19 has not dropped below 30% in the last seven weeks and the 4000,  daily tests announced by President Cortizo in his July 1 address remain, like other promises, unfulfilled.

Epidemiological reports of the Ministry of Health (Minsa) reveal  that last week (July 26 to August 1) there was a positivity rate of new cases of 32.70%, and the previous week (July 19 to 25)  it was 32.46%

In the week that ended last Saturday there were  22,996 tests, of which 7,519 were positive; and in the previous week, 20, 339 were carried out, for a total of 6, 603  positive cases.

Juan-Paul Carrera, epidemiologist, and virologist at the Gorgas Commemorative Institute for Health Studies, said that the situation is due to the fact that there is a “plateau” of constant transmission.

“The situation has been somewhat mitigated, but the country has not achieved the suppression of the virus,” Carrera said.

The Minsa data also show that the days with the highest positivity for tests for Covid-19 disease were on July 12 – when it scored 42.9% based on 3,590 tests carried out -, and on June 1, when it was  41.3%, but only 905 tests were done.

On Monday,  Aug 3 the positivity percentage was 37%, with 2,683 tests carried out, for a total of 1,300 new cases.

The infectologist and former director of the Gorgas Institute for Health Studies (Icges), Néstor Sosa, expressed that these numbers indicate community transmission, and there is still no decrease in the number of new cases per day.

He said that controlling the widespread community transmission of the Covid-19 requires general measures (avoiding crowds, closing schools, hygiene, staying home, wearing a mask, among others) and rapid detection of infections search for contacts, isolation, and quarantine) at near-perfect levels.

In addition, he said, one possibility is to concentrate the measures in the areas of greatest circulation of the virus, but it is difficult to make epidemiological fences in the most affected areas, as they did in Italy and is being carried out in communities of Catalonia (Spain), because it is required a lot of coordination and resources.

In the last epidemiological week the country reported 7,519 cases, 910 more than the previous epidemiological week (July 19 to 25) when 6 ,603 people were infected with Covid-19, a disease that transmits the SARS virus- CoV-2.