Panama and US  among 11 countries with highest covid-19 transmission

Panama is listed   by the scientific journal The Lancet  among  11 countries   in the world  with the highest transmission rate of Covid-19  

The other countries that make up the list are: the United States, Bolivia, Spain, Argentina, Israel, Kuwait, Brazil, Colombia, Bahrain and the Maldives.

The classification of Panama in the group of countries with very high transmission is due to the fact that in the country there are between 100 or more new cases per million inhabitants per day. Transmission is considered to have been suppressed when there are five or fewer new cases per million inhabitants per day in the country.

The report was prepared by a Covid-19 Lancet Commission with data from the countries until last August. The commission was created to help governments, civil society and United Nations entities respond effectively to the pandemic.

Countries with high or very high transmission rates are not carrying out enough non-pharmacological interventions to control Covid-19 disease, as countries in Asia and the Pacific have done.

Enrique Mendoza, dean of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Panama, and a member of the Health Advisory Council, who is aware of the report, stated that the results that have been obtained in the country in recent months with the deceleration of the virus is due to non-pharmacological measures designed to prevent infected people from spreading the virus to others.

He said that the decision of the Government authorities to cancel the national holidays and the Carnival of 2021 is in line with non-pharmacological measures, and he acknowledged the authorities for having made difficult decisions proactively.

Non-pharmacological interventions are physical distancing, restriction of meetings, teleworking, among others.

Mendoza recalled that the country has 16 positive people for every 100,000 inhabitants daily, much higher than the threshold for a safe opening of commercial activities. “This means that even though we are in a deceleration phase, we are in a zone of risk of re-acceleration,” he said.

Health Minister  Luis Francisco Sucre waned on  Tuesday that an increase in cases of Covid-19 is not ruled out, as a result of the reopening of economic activities in the country.

Sucre stated that most of the countries that to date had achieved control of this pandemic, after the reopening of commercial activities have suffered a new wave of cases.