"The various measures that Mayor Alfredo Francolini, together with the local COES, have been taking since the first day of the health emergency due to the Covid-19 pandemic, have yielded very good results," assured Dr. Mauro García. "There was an initial measure which was the installation of health checkpoints at the city entrances. That managed to delay the entry of the coronavirus into Concordia for a long time. We all saw how cases were increasing in other cities, while in Concordia there were practically none, and for the few cases we had, we could act quickly to block them, prevent the spread of infections, and provide the patient with the necessary care in each case," noted the Secretary of Health and Sports.
This "allowed us to strengthen the local health system and prepare for eventualities, such as needing isolation areas for many people who cannot quarantine in their homes. Through coordinated work with the Provincial Government, we were able to train health personnel, work on strengthening the health system, and achieved very important things, such as processing samples and obtaining Covid results at the Masvernat hospital, which is a great advantage for health teams. If we had not delayed the arrival of the pandemic, this would have been much more costly," he stressed.
"Concordia is not an island and we knew that sooner or later the virus would arrive. And in a large city like Concordia, the second city of the province, everything indicated that there would be community transmission, as there eventually was. The important thing is that the restrictive measures that were taken allowed us to raise awareness and prepare for that moment," the professional added.
INDIVIDUAL CARE IS FUNDAMENTAL
Continuing with the analysis of the situation, García commented that "when you have community transmission, the fundamental thing is care within the city. The individual care of each person. At times people show a greater degree of awareness, and at times they relax and enter periods where there is less care. It is understandable. We are going through an unprecedented pandemic that has lasted a year and has modified all of our behaviors. But these are the moments when we must take the most care; if we see that positive cases are decreasing, we must not let our guard down. It is when we must take the most care to manage to reduce the contagion curve to the lowest possible value," he insisted.
EXPONENTIAL GROWTH OF CASES
"When the end-of-year holiday season arrived, something we foresaw happened. These are days of inter-family gatherings, there were also many clandestine parties, and we all know that that is where the main focus of contagion is. During the holidays is when we lower our guard the most and take the least care of ourselves, face masks are not used, social distancing is not respected, there is a gathering of people," he detailed.
"After the end-of-year holidays, we began to see that the contagion curve did not follow a plateaued growth but rather entered an exponential growth, reaching a bottleneck of almost 200 cases per day. And let us remember that those are the cases confirmed by laboratory, but there may be more cases of people who are asymptomatic, who have not been tested and have been infected and can infect others. So we are talking about a significant number of cases," he pointed out.
STOPPING CONTAGIONS AND REDUCING THE CURVE
"That is why it was decided to restrict nightlife activity. And after fifteen days, it was possible to reduce the number of cases and return to numbers similar to those recorded before the holidays. Today we are having between 70 and 80 cases per day. Not only was the contagion rate stopped, but it was reduced to a third of the peak that had been reached," he emphasized. "If that measure had not been taken, the growth of the curve would have continued exponentially, putting the entire population at risk," he assured.
"The ideal is to have no cases. But given that Concordia is declared as having community transmission of coronavirus, the population density we have and the movement of people that exists, in a city where there are very few restrictions, today we have a relatively manageable daily average of cases. That is why it is important that we continue to take care of ourselves, because if we relax now, greater restrictions will have to be applied later, and no one wants that. To move forward, the individual responsibility of each person, to take care of themselves and take care of others, is fundamental," he concluded.