Covid hits hard in patients under 20 years of age

The drama of patients with complications who go looking for beds to be admitted and cannot find them continues.

Santo Domingo, DR

To date, the country has registered 31,452 cases of children under 20 years of age who have received a positive diagnosis of Covid-19 in the country. These figures have been increasing systematically in the last eight days.

One week ago, in bulletin 426, the surveillance system registered 30,839 positive cases in that age group. At the same time, yesterday, it reported 31,452 cases, for a record of 613 new diagnoses from the 18th to the 25th of this month, with new cases reported every day.

It is precisely in this young population that the Ministry of Public Health authorities is placing greater emphasis on avoiding crowds, the so-called “teteos,” (alcohol-fuelled get-togethers and hangouts), and the call to vaccinate those over 18 years of age.

Yesterday, the Minister of Public Health, Daniel Rivera, referred to the increase of Covid-19 cases in young adults, “We believe that young people are currently the nucleus of attack to the virus because of the number of young adults we are having and the number who have died,” he said.

Positive cases
Meanwhile, some 1,702 new positive cases of the Covid-19 virus were detected in the country in the last 24 hours, while the positivity of the processed samples reached almost 24%, also showing an increase in this indicator of the previous four weeks, which was established at 13.33%.

Greater Santo Domingo and San Cristobal are the two provinces that contribute the highest number of positive cases of the virus. Of those registered in the last 24 hours, the National District reported 662 new infections, Santo Domingo 479, and San Cristobal 105 new cases. In third place is the province of Santiago de los Caballeros, with 62 new diagnoses.

Full beds
Despite the increase in the number of beds available for the care of patients with Covid-19, the hospital occupancy rate continues to rise, reaching yesterday an overall average of 63% in Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds with the registration of 363 hospitalized patients.

In intermediate care, occupancy increased to 42%, with 1,070 patients admitted, and ventilator occupancy increased to 51%, with 242 patients on life support.

In Greater Santo Domingo, these occupancy values increased, with intensive care occupancy at 76%, ventilator occupancy at 74%, and intermediate care beds at 71%.

Three new deaths
The country reported three new deaths due to Covid-19, bringing the total number of deaths registered in the system to 3,613 since the first case of death of a 47-year-old woman was registered on 16 March 2020.

WHO ALERT
Death plateau
The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) yesterday warned of a “worrying” plateau of covid-19 cases and deaths in recent weeks in the Americas. It lamented that many people and places have failed to comply with preventive measures. “Last week there were more than 1.2 million new cases of covid-19 and 31,000 deaths reported in the Americas,” said its director, Carissa Etienne.