The Canary Islands have so far registered a total of 2,385 accumulated cases of COVID-19, which is three more than this Friday. Of the total cases, 99 remain active. With data closed at 8:00 p.m., 2,124 people have been discharged in the islands after overcoming the coronavirus, and the number of deaths stands at 162, which puts an end to ten consecutive days without deaths.
According to data from the Ministry of Health, a total of 950 people have required hospitalization in the Canary Islands after testing positive for coronavirus, three in the last seven days. Of all of them, 184 have required admission to intensive care units (ICU). Of the total active cases, 80 are receiving assistance at home, 16 are hospitalized, and 3 are admitted to the ICU.
Of the positives registered by the virus, which already affects some 57 municipalities, 1,293 are women and 1,092 are men. The number of healthcare professionals infected with COVID-19 since the beginning of the crisis is 587, which represents 1.89% of the total staff of the Canary Islands Health Service, which has 31,000 workers.
By islands, and following the item of the case's residence, the one with the most accumulated positives is Tenerife, which has 1,499 cases; followed by Gran Canaria with 600 cases; La Palma, 106 cases; Lanzarote, 88 cases; Fuerteventura, 46 cases; La Gomera, 8 cases, and El Hierro, 3 cases.
There are 39 people who have been diagnosed and treated and are registered by area of declaration (the island on which the test was analyzed) but it has not been possible to identify their area of residence because they may be tourists, port area workers, or people without accommodation.
The deaths by islands are distributed as follows: 114 deaths in Tenerife; 6 in La Palma; 39 in Gran Canaria, and 6 in Lanzarote.
The Canary Islands Health Service has carried out a total of 127,842 PCR tests (Polymerase Chain Reaction) for the diagnosis of COVID-19 since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak.
Suspected cases
The Ministry of Health of the Government of the Canary Islands, adapting to the new protocol of the Ministry of Health, has reported that as of 8:00 p.m. yesterday, SCS professionals, in their tracking work, have detected a total of 203 suspected cases in the Canary Islands.
The new protocol of the Ministry establishes that a "suspected case" will be considered "any person with a clinical picture of acute respiratory infection of sudden onset of any severity that presents, among others, with fever, cough, or sensation of shortness of breath. Other atypical symptoms will be assessed (loss of taste, loss of smell, diarrhea, muscle pain, etc.) under clinical criteria as possible suspects".
The protocol establishes that these people should be studied with PCR in the following 24 hours. So this index is not cumulative but these people will become either positive or negative cases in a period of between 24 and 72 hours, which is the time it takes to perform tests, transfer, microbiological treatment, and notification.
New web information
The Ministry of Health has included in the web portal the information related to the existing healthcare capacities in all the hospitals of the Autonomous Community. The data included are the bed occupancy rate by COVID-19 patients and non-COVID-19 patients, as well as the number of free beds both in hospitalization and in ICU and in Emergency, in the Canary Islands and by hospitals.
The beds occupied by COVID cases may not coincide with the one registered in the Epidemiological Data section of the web since the positive patients who have not been able to be discharged are still registered as such in the hospital Admission services even if they have become negative.
Normally they are patients who continue to be admitted with that record that originated the admission but who are already being treated for other health complications and who, therefore, are no longer being treated for Covid-19.
The web includes information on positive cases according to the patient's place of residence and according to the place of declaration of the case; information on the distribution of positives by municipalities; the number of deaths by locality; the count of epidemiologically closed cases; the data of active cases by municipality including their distribution by type of hospitalization and graphs with the distribution of positives by sex and by age group and with the evolution of positive, deceased, and closed cases since January 31, the date on which the first positive was declared in the Canary Islands and throughout Spain, on the island of La Gomera. It also provides the data of the PCR tests carried out in the Archipelago since the beginning of the outbreak with graphs according to their result: positive, negative, and inconclusive.
Prevention measures of contagion
The Ministry of Health insists on the importance of maintaining the rules to avoid contagion. It warns of the need to comply with hygiene rules to avoid outbreaks of the pandemic.
One of the main sources of contagion that must be addressed at this time are intrafamilial ones. In this sense, security measures must be extreme in family visits and in the coexistence itself, keeping safety distances, not sharing elements such as cutlery, and using a mask if necessary.
The Ministry reminds that the use of masks is already mandatory for all people over six years of age when it is not possible to maintain the interpersonal distance of two meters in public spaces, both closed and outdoors.
Likewise, hygienic and surgical masks that cover the nose and mouth are also recommended for children between 3 and 5 years old. Their use will not be required in people who have some type of breathing difficulty, those who have duly justified health reasons, or those who due to their situation of disability or dependence present behavioral alterations that make it unfeasible.
