QCOSTARICA – In the last two weeks, the country doubled the new cases of covid-19, from 3,000 weekly cases to 6,000.
In the past week alone, the country added 1,121 new cases on Wednesday, April 14, 1,121 on Thursday, April 15, 1,044 on Friday, April 16,1,060 on Saturday, April 17, 664 on Sunday, April 18, 536 on Monday, April 19 and 1, 130 cases on Tuesday, April 20; that is, in just one week – seven days – there were 6,624 infections.
The daily average for the week was 946 cases, more than double that up to Semana Santa.
At Tuesday’s press conference from the Casa Presidencial auditorium, Alexander Solís, president of the National Emergency Commission (CNE), said that last year, when there was a large increase in cases in the country, between July and August, it took seven weeks to go from three thousand weekly cases to six thousand, “which makes it clear how worrying the situation is, since this time it took place in just two weeks”.
The Ministry of Health reported on Tuesday, the accumulated infections since March 2020 is now 231,967 people, of which 199,166 (86%) have recovered and 29,697 (13%) are actively carrying the virus.
The spike in daily cases also saw a return of double-digit deaths on three days of the week: 10 deaths associated with covid-19 on Wednesday, April 14, 11 on Thursday, April 15, and 13 on Saturday, April 17; the other days, 6 on Friday, April 16, 7 on Sunday, April 18, 8 on Monday, April 19 and 5 on Tuesday, April 20, for a total of 60 for the week.
The accumulated deaths associated with covid-19 in Costa Rica is now 3,104, of which 1,936 are men and 1,168 women, ranging in age from 2 to 103 years; the average age is 70.6 years.
Worrisome to Health officials is the rise in hospitalizations. On Tuesday, there were 569 people in hospital, of which 269 required intensive care.
If you will recall, in February the Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social (CCSS), began throttling back the number of hospital beds (and ICU units) due to low number of new cases and patients requiring hospitalization.
This meant that the Caja could return to carrying out elective surgeries and admitting patients with other pathologies as it had done prior to the pandemic.
Re-converting these beds and services to Covid-19 patients is not an easy task, as explained by the Director of Medical Services at the CCSS, Dr. Mario Ruiz.
On Monday, only seven ICU beds were free to receive the most critical of covid-19 patients.
