QCOSTARICA – The reproduction rate of Covid-19 accelerated again in Costa Rica in the past ten days, a scenario that has been observed in other epidemiological moments, mainly associated with long weekends.
This change is attributed to different factors, among them the relaxation of the sanitary measures, which registers, weeks later, an increase in cases.
This is determined by the Development Observatory of the University of Costa Rica (UCR), which gathers, organizes and interprets the dynamics of cases of Covid-19 in Costa Rica, based on the official information provided by the Ministry of Health.
The data reveals that in the days prior to the long weekends of July 25 and August 2, the number of new cases daily was on average 1,200, even dropping to below 1,000 for three consecutive days – July 25 (823), 26 (614) and 27 (856) – and once again on August 1 (960), 2 (1,020) and 3 (943).
But then spiked again, reaching 2,128 new cases on Wednesday, August 11, crossing a threshold that we hadn’t seen since the first days of June.
The spike in new cases also affects the hospital system. According to the UCR report, by August 9, a total of 22,553 people have passed through the hospital system (8,302 during 2020 and 14,571 during 2021). Of this group of people, more than 17 thousand people have passed through a hospital room, and more than five thousand in an intensive care unit.
On the other hand, if the average number of cases for this first semester is followed, the data shows that the year could close with nearly three thousand more deaths associated with covid-19, with a cumulative eight thousand deaths by the year’s end.
With respect to this estimation model, Costa Rica is expected to stabilize at less than a thousand news cases per day until November 2021.
This scenario is based on the current behavior of the virus and the current rate of infection.
