Border and community watch against omicron reinforced

Health Minister of Health, Luis Francisco Sucre, reiterated Thursday, December 9, that epidemiological and genomic surveillance has been reinforced at the entrance and exit doors of the country, in order to be able to detect the Omicron variant of Covid-19, which to date has not occurred.

Sucre also said that 90% of those who died from Covid-19 were unvaccinated or did not get their full schedule, of two anti-covid doses.

He emphasized that anticovid vaccines “do not make us immortal”, but rather improve the immune system and reduce the probability that the disease will complicate.

Sucre said that of ​​improving and reinforcing surveillance will not prevent the variant from reaching the country. “At some point, it will enter,” he said.

He explained that what is being tried is to “handle it and delay it” as much as possible, as was done with the Delta variant so that when the country enters the country “scientists have more information on how the virus is managed and we can have” greater control.

 What is sought is that this situation “does not hit us” as it happened in December and January of last year, when the cases increased, although in the hospitals it was quite controlled.

Scientists at the Gorgas Memorial Institute for Health Studies (Icges) carry out epidemiological and genomic surveillance to identify cases with this new variant, classified by the World Health Organization as of concern.

“All travelers arriving from suspected countries undergo genomic surveillance, so far we have no cases [of the Omicron variant],” said Juan Pascale, director of Icges.

However, Pascale recalled that when the first case of SARS CoV2 arrived in the country, it was expected from China, which was the first place where the new coronavirus was detected, “but it came from other countries that already had it.” For this reason community surveillance is being carried out, since Panama is a logistics hub.