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General quarantine or total confinement of the population has been one of the measures taken by most countries to halt the advance of the pandemic. What it seeks is to limit the movement of people and thus reduce the transmission rate of the new coronavirus.
And although it was effective at the time, as various scientific studies and the same statistics have verified, today it is considered by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the last resort in a series of decisions a country must make to combat covid-19.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said this week that if governments succeed “Apply their contact tracking system and focus on isolating all cases and quarantining contacts”It will therefore be possible to avoid generalized imprisonment, he said.
(Read also: antibodies generated by Sars-CoV-2 would fall “very quickly”)
And it is that the generalized quarantine scenario has once again been taken into account in Europe, where half of the cases in the world are occurring and intensive care units are starting to run out. Indeed, Ireland was the first European country to implement a second general blockade. Wales has joined this measure since Friday and for several weeks.
However, for now the decisions taken by the governments of that continent have been concentrated curfew, specific closures from shops or places with a high risk of contagion and local borders.
It should be borne in mind that Colombia and Latin America are experiencing an epidemiological moment different from that of Europe. While in that continent they are in a second wave of infections, in this part of the world the data show a slow steady decrease and in the particular case of our country there is a sort of plateau of cases and mortality.
(Read this special: Covid-19 and life in tow after going through intensive care)
Even so, both the Ministry of Health and the Bogotá Mayor’s Office have warned that a rebound in cases it is possible towards the end of November and the first days of December and that is why they insisted on individual responsibility as the first measure to control this scenario.
Alejandro Gómez, district secretary for health, says that Bogotá can overcome the second probable peak of the pandemic without setting rigid boundaries thanks ” acquired experience, the expansion of our intensive care units (from 940 to 2,200 in the city), as well as the ability to provide diagnostic aids and the DAR (Detect, Isolate and Report) strategy ”.
Former Health Minister Gabriel Riveros makes it clear a new total imprisonment would be proof of failure knowledge of the epidemiological situation at national level. “I believe that boundaries of smaller areas will certainly be needed, which are defined based on the epidemiological information available. This is to the extent that the country has several pandemics, as the evolution is different from regions, departments and municipalities, “he says.
(See: 30,000 deaths from covid-19 in Colombia: X-rays of a tragedy)
Luis Jorge Hernández, doctor in public health, agrees that the total quarantines “They are no longer useful, they have lost their effect and cause a lot of psychosocial and health damage due to events that are not prevented or treated”. “Three combined strategies have the same effectiveness: adherence of the population to the mask and hand washing; laboratory testing, contact tracing and insulation; and gradual openings with capacity “.
Carlos Eduardo Pérez, infectologist, recalls that the general quarantines they are not used to eliminate the virus but to slow down its transmission and in that sense, confinement would only be a decision based on health indicators such as ICU employment and not on the number of cases. “It will depend on the response of the health system and not on the affected populations,” he concludes.
Carlos Álvarez, national coordinator of covid-19 studies for WHO, says that the case of Colombia is different from that of Europe because here the confinement has not led to a suppression but to the reduction of the effective reproductive number (infections produced by each infected) 2.6 to 1. “There is always the possibility of total isolation depending on the behavior of the population, especially in large cities,” he says.
(You can keep reading: Medellín will have a curfew from this Thursday and the bridge will dry up)
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