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After suffering one of the most tragic COVID-19 epidemics on the planet, the virus seems to have gone extinct from Iquitos without anyone knowing very well why.
Iquitos suffered one of the most tragic COVID-19 attacks on the planet, with hundreds of deaths and frightening images of the hospital’s collapse and the drama of lack of medical oxygen. Today, however, the virus appears to have practically gone extinct without anyone really knowing why.
Located in the heart of the Peruvian Amazon rainforest, this city, the largest in the world that cannot be reached by road, is a complex case study of the disease, which has reached its hardest extremes there, but where it has also deflated. drastically to date, it has only a trickle of isolated cases with few clinical consequences.
Since the beginning of September, the painful statistics of deaths, hospitalizations and relentless progression of the disease have been clouded to almost irrelevant numbers, with little certainty but some suspicion about what might have happened.
Cases
Across the Loreto region, whose capital is Iquitos, only 4 cases of the disease were reported last week and 19 the previous week. According to the data that Efe was able to consult, no one requested hospitalization.
Sources in the public health system report that in Iquitos hospitals there were only 3 patients admitted for covid this Friday and two suspected of having the disease.
There also appear to be few deaths and although there is still an excess of mortality in the area compared to pre-pandemic records, in the city of Iquitos itself, where some 413,000 people live, the vast majority of the region’s population, normalcy appears to be returned.
In Loreto the positivity rate in covid tests is very high and is around 35%, even if in the last few weeks very few and almost all rapid tests have been carried out, which detect antibodies, but not the validity of the virus.
But more than figures, there is a general perception in the city that something has happened with the disease.
“Yes, it is true that there are almost no cases. When you talk to colleagues, they say there are one or two cases a week, at most. During the crisis there were sessions with 300 patients, up to 500 per day. Now that these cases are coming, which are even milder, it obviously makes everything much more bearable, ”Luis Runciman, dean of Loreto Medical College, told EFE.
Immunity
Subject to, and always underlining the risks that such a situation reveals, the explanation that this doctor has found for this sudden and already prolonged decline in cases, in an economy that is practically no longer restricted and in a social context like Loreto where social detachment it is a chimera, it passes through a certain “herd immunity”.
“The Loreto Health Department has carried out a research work, stratified, by area, by age, very well done, where it was found that the prevalence of covid is 74% in Iquitos. It was repeated over several months and this prevalence was repeated. If so, there would be only 25% of the population who did not suffer from the disease and those are now the sporadic cases that are occurring, “he said.
In this context, Runciman pointed out that while Spain or Italy published prevalence studies indicating that only 5% of their populations had been infected with covid, logic suggested that a massive second wave was a great possibility.
“But this region has a much higher prevalence and therefore less chance of anything like this happening. This second wave behavior is not seen in Iquitos, for several months we have had very, very low cases, only sporadic. There is no second wave and this can be attributed to the high prevalence in the peak months of the pandemic. It’s simply that few people are likely to get sick, ”he reasoned.
Don’t let your guard down
However, the chief physician of Loreto indicated that “the great risk has not yet passed” for the region and asked for great caution and not to let our guard down.
“It happens that we don’t know anything, we don’t know how many serotypes there may be of the disease. How many types of covids are there? We can say that we have passed one, but that another more aggressive one arrives, so we must continue to prepare for the worst, “he said.
Likewise, mathematician and data analyst Marco Loret de Mola, one of Peru’s foremost experts in advancing the disease, was told that although he pointed to “herd immunity” as a possibility for what is happening in Iquitos, Ha pointed out that there are other points that allow the attenuation of the disease.
“It’s strange enough, yes, that there aren’t that many deaths or infections, and more when you take into account that since October the economy has been fully open in practice. But it is also striking that cases are decreasing across the country … This is why I am inclined to think that it is more a consequence of everyone’s collective effort to prevent, with general hygiene and precautions, rather than the herd effect ” , Loret de Mola told Efe.
Likewise, the analyst warned that the math “is still there” and that if there is still 30% of the population to be infected in Iquitos, that still means the possibility of “more losses and more deaths”.
“For me herd immunity is not the main variable in this situation, except that it can help the conscience of citizens, who are inspired and see a light,” he added.
The guard is off
That request, however, does not seem to have penetrated the population, which is assumed as a fact, and for the most pilgrim reasons, as Efe was able to verify, that the covid has already passed.
“If there is immunity, because in due course it was so strong that it hit us all. Now people are confident and know what to heal with, using our jungle plants and with that we are cured. There is tranquility and people are confident. We’re on zero, ”Germán Salas, a salesman in the popular Belén neighborhood of Iquitos, told Efe.
Mirna Padilla, a client, agreed that the residents of the city have “become immune” to the virus, having already been through “the bad times”.
Likewise, he indicated that the area “will live with this covid, which has not yet completely disappeared, as we live with other diseases such as dengue and malaria. So we will continue, protecting and taking care of ourselves, “he added.
However, he could not explain why it is now very common in the city to see people without masks and without respecting the minimum protection restrictions, which he justified by stating that “some react to what they tell us about the city (Lima) and say that masks they do more damage, that the virus remains with the sweat and therefore they become infected and that without a mask they are healthier “.
That argument had already been heard when in May the corpses were crammed into the morgue of the Loreto hospitals.
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