What are the new criteria to consider positive cases

Los ministros de Salud de todo el país reunidos en el Comité Federal de Salud (Cofesa) establecieron el viernes nuevas pautas en relación a la actualización del criterio clínico y epidemiológico para la confirmación de casos de Covid-19.

The Nation and the provinces established that "any person who meets at least one of the epidemiological criteria and one of the established clinical criteria will be classified as a confirmed case."

Thus, COVID will be considered confirmed to "every person who has had close contact with a case confirmed in the last 10 days", who has "participated in an event or social/labor space in which at least 3 has occurredConfirmed cases (outbreak) »or that« that resides in an area with very high incidence (greater than 500 cases every 100,000 inhabitants in the last 14 days).In all three cases, it is taken into account that also present two or more symptoms (fever, cough, sore throat, difficulty breathing, vomiting/diarrhea/headache/muscle pain) or sudden loss of taste/smell ».

The opinion of the specialists

Specialists highlighted the importance of new guidelines in relation to the update of the clinical and epidemiological criteria for the confirmation of COVID-19 cases because "the test system does not supply" before the high level of infections and emphasized to maintain the realizationof test in people with risk factors, in addition to the care criteria.

"The change in criteria has a logic, based on the basis that there is a test system that does not supply the needs," the Immunologist and researcher at CONICET, Jorge Geffner told Télam.

The health authorities of Nation and the provinces established that "any person who meets at least one of the epidemiological criteria and one of the established clinical criteria will be classified as a confirmed case."

Elena Obieta, an infectologist and member of the Argentine Society of Infectology (SADI), stressed that "in this epidemiological context we must not emphasize so much emphasis on the etiological diagnosis, that is, confirmation by antigen or PCR test" because "the onlyIt is overloading the health system in human time cost, technical resource and money ».

However, he clarified that it is importantDiabetes, renal, cardiac, immunosuppressed insufficiency) ».

On the current epidemiological situation, Geffner stressed: «We are with a level of positivity greater than 70 percent.That implies that we do not really have 100 or 120 thousand cases, but very possibly we are very close to 200,000 cases per day.That is huge ».

The specialist indicated that "this level of infections translates into a level of death that is increasing", although it is a scenario "very different from that of the last wave thanks to the vaccination scheme, which currently reaches 74 percent coverage with twodose".

In the Virtual Meeting of the Federal Health Council (Cofesa), where the Minister of Health of the Nation, Carla Vizzotti, and her peers of the 24 jurisdictions of the country agreed on the changes in the criteria of confirmation of positive cases of COVIS-19,Strategies were also addressed to strengthen vaccination coverage for the start of the school cycle.

In this regard, Vizzotti reported that a specific work table with the Ministry of Education is just over a month of the restart of the classes planned for March 2 in almost the entire country.

"The important thing is that good vaccination coverage with two doses is reached and that protection measures are used, such as using the facial mask or chinTo Télam the Secretary of the Infectology Committee of the Argentine Pediatrics Society, Gabriela Ensinck, on the beginning of the 2022 school cycle.