MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina reports more Covid-19 patients in ICU

“The current issue is vaccination,” Dubin said

Argentina's sanitary system is noticing an increase in the number of patients hospitalized in intensive care units (ICUs) with Covid-19 during the first weeks of January, it was reported Thursday in Buenos Aires. ICU specialist Arnaldo Dubin spoke to local media about “mainly elderly patients, with many comorbidities and an out-of-date vaccination schedule.”

Dubin also said that at this point it was “impossible to quantify” the total number of cases “because few tests are carried out.” He also stressed the importance of complying with the vaccination schedule recommended by the Health Ministry whereby people in high risk (aged 50 or older, pregnant women, and those immunocompromised) should get a booster dose every 6 months, while low-risk people (between 6 months and 49 years with no comorbidities) need one additional shot every 12 months.

The expert also said that the collapse of the healthcare system during the pandemic “was mainly due to the shortage and fatigue of healthcare workers, especially intensivists.”

“If there were a new pandemic, the catastrophe would be much worse than the previous one. Medicine is facing an unprecedented crisis,” he added.

The physician added that there are fewer professionals doing residency training. “In a few years we are going to have a huge lack of properly trained physicians,” he warned.

Regarding a possible return to mandatory facemasks in closed spaces, Dubin said it was “still controversial and we have to wait a little” while insisting “that the current issue is vaccination.”

This week, health authorities in the province of Salta confirmed the death of a person with Covid-19 amid a significant increase in the number of cases in the last few days. Salta's General Director of Epidemiological Coordination Francisco García Campos said that “so far this year 109 positive cases of Covid-19 have been registered, of which 20 are from the first week and 89 from the second week.”

This week “we have four patients hospitalized and, unfortunately, the first death was registered,” he added but released no information as to the identity and age of the deceased.

“Since mid-December, there has been an increase in the number of coronavirus cases from one epidemiological week to the next. Salta accompanies the increase of cases in Argentina and other countries of the world,” García Campos also said.