The Pan American Health Organization warns that cases of COVID-19 doubled in El Salvador last week

Dr. Carissa Etienne, Director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), gave a report on the situation of COVID-19 in the American continent on Wednesday, and in the midst of a series of alert calls to different countries, she noted that “Central America has reported the largest number of deaths so far and today. A third of hospitalized patients are in the intensive care unit,” then explained that “COVID-19 infections are accelerating in Panama, Belize and El Salvador, where new cases have doubled in the last 7 days.”

This statement from the PAHO does not match the data recorded by the Ministry of Health of El Salvador on the covid19.gob.sv page, reflecting between 149 and 156 cases per day since May 15, 2021. The last update date is May 30.

Coming to the daily report tab on the said website, the latest detailed information is from April 22, 2021, so they already have over a month of delay in updating said reports.

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Director Etienne, who is an expert in health administration, health systems and healthcare, said that “unfortunately, throughout our region we have seen misinformation about COVID-19, which raises doubts about health measures that have been tested, often in the context of political conflicts.”

In a television interview at the beginning of the week, Francisco Alabi, Minister of Health of El Salvador, did not report this duplication of cases that alerted the Pan American Health Organization in El Salvador. On the contrary, he said that there has been stability since February 2021, when there are between 120 and 170 case a day.

Regarding how to deal with information about COVID-19 in the country, Minister Alabi announced Tuesday evening, before the formal session in the Legislative Assembly, that “in addition to the #COVID19 epidemic, there is another epidemic: that of disinformation”. And the Press Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic added in a tweet that the minister confirmed that “to confront the latter (media disinformation), a decision was taken to make reservations on certain information regarding dealing with the epidemic.”

Roberto Federre, a Salvadoran surgeon and epidemiologist, responded to Minister Alabi’s remarks, posting on Twitter that “if the data were public and transparent – accessible for analysis by government, academia and professionals – there would be less ‘misinformation'”. The real problem is that This information is preserved. Science is science only, if it can be verified and replicated.”

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By a decision of the Ministry of Health, all information related to the vaccination plan against the emerging coronavirus, COVID-19, is reserved until March 2026; Data for the government’s PCR-RT tests for the virus will be available until June 2022.

Besides the reservation of the Salvadoran government to this information, the increase in the number of cases due to the SARS-CoV-2 virus is occurring throughout the American continent, Etienne explained, because “since the beginning of the new year, we have seen a rapid increase in infections . .in the first five months only From 2021, cases and deaths have doubled in our region.”

Out of private medical care, Dr. Ivan Solano Leyva, an infectious disease expert, warned in recent days that “with more frequency, we see patients who get COVID in our clinic, despite receiving the first dose of the Coronavac vaccine,” made by the Chinese laboratory Sinovac. .