Covid daily deaths hit new high but signs of cases stabalising

On the day that the  Health  Ministry reported a new record of Covid-19 patients in ICUs (237); and a   new peak in the daily toll (57)  For the epidemiologist Arturo Rebollón, says the average number of daily cases, (3,300) remains the same as 14 days ago. “It is a good sign, since every 14 days we came with an average acceleration of 500 new cases per day,”

While Francisco Sánchez Cárdenas , from the Health Advisory Council, said that right now there is slight stability in the positivity of the tests, but that does not mean that there are fewer cases. “What slowed down was the speed. We still don’t have to celebrate ”, he added.

On Thursday the Ministry of Health reported 2,877 new cases and 57 new deaths. Panama has high rates of cases and deaths in America

Although the country has been experiencing a stabilization in the speed of new infections, the average number of new daily cases still remains high.

It is a dynamic that could give hope to the most optimistic within the country, but, facing the world, Panama remains among the first places in America with the highest rates of infection and mortality.

The country situation report of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) indicates that in the last four epidemiological weeks, the country went from 19,000 3eekly cases to 25,000 cases. That looks at the last three weeks of 2020 and the first of 2021.

Compared with the other countries of America, Panama has the highest mortality rate (104 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants) in Central America and the third highest in the continent, only surpassed by Peru and the United States.

regarding the rate of infections, the country ranks second in America (6,525 accumulated cases per 100,000 inhabitants) after the United States.

For epidemiologists and members of the Health Advisory Council, this has two explanations: the behavior of the population, which insists on not complying with biosafety measures, and the high number of tests that are being carried out in the country.

In fact, the PAHO report specifies that although Panama shows the second-highest incidence of Covid-19 in America, it is one of the countries that applies the most diagnostic tests to the population (335,319 tests per million inhabitants), being surpassed only by Chile (359,335 tests per million inhabitants), Canada (375 622 tests per million inhabitants) and the United States 780 ,38 tests per million inhabitants).

For epidemiologist Rebollón, this scenario has two readings. The first is that the country leads statistics of infections and deaths because it is obviously also one of the places in the region that does the most tests.

“Our system has been characterized by doing many tests, and that indicates that we are counting new infections and deaths better than other countries. That means that our numbers as a country do not have as much margin of error, and thatour figures are closer to reality, “he