The management of the pandemic undergoes a notable change of course. In just three days, the Andalusian Government has gone from ruling out on Friday the imposition of restrictions on “citizen and economic mobility” to announcing yesterday that “possibly” the committees of territorial experts will meet this week to point out the health districts that have been located at alert level 1, after more than a month with the entire Andalusian geography at level 0. This situation, called the “new normality” or “low circulation of the virus” at the traffic light, entails the absence of limitations social character. This is not the case at alert level 1.
The evolution of the indicators of the pandemic is on the rise. Also in Andalusia, despite the fact that the Minister of Health, Jesus Aguirre, reported yesterday of a slight decrease in the number of hospitalizations during the weekend. We will have to wait, in any case, for the trend in admissions throughout the week to corroborate this fact, since it is known that the epidemiological data notified on Mondays by the health administrations, after the weekend, usually suffer corrections on the days later. The degree of saturation of the hospitals, more than the level of infections that the indicator of the accumulated incidence marks, Aguirre insisted yesterday, will be the one that mainly determines the establishment of restrictions that correspond to alert level 1.
Under the social order that dictates the state of the hospitals, an indicator that the president of the Board, Juanma Moreno, also referred to on Friday -subjecting the implementation of restriction policies to their evolution-, it is worth mentioning that they are the provinces of Almeria and, above all, Huelva and Malaga, which are located in more delicate values ​​in hospitalizations. However, Aguirre defined the current “clinical incidence” of hospital centers in a “less malevolent” state than in previous waves, which is what can be expected from the high proportion of people vaccinated in Andalusia -81% of the total population and 92% of the population over 12 years old,
Pending therefore to know the colorometric qualification of the traffic light that the Andalusian provincial experts resolve, which “possibly” will be seen tomorrow, according to what Aguirre reported yesterday, the pandemic continues to offer uncertainties and rapid variations in trends that force the adoption of policies, even more so in dates that precede the quintessential family celebrations.
Although virologists and immunologists have trusted throughout the pandemic that it was unlikely that a supervariant would arrive that would elude immune protection, the first observations regarding the omicron variant -already sequenced in almost all of Europe and confirmed yesterday in Madrid- It is focusing on the ability that this new specimen may show to be more transmissible, more virulent or more resistant to immune systems.
No news on these particulars is expected until next week, although doctors in South Africa are already reporting changes in admission demographics. The population between 20 and 30 years of age is the most affected, especially the unvaccinated.
