The explosion of Covid infections is collapsing health services and one of the consequences is arriving in the management of discharges, both work and epidemiological, which are those that allow determining how many cases remain active. In the case of Lanzarote, the Ministry of Health placed them this Monday at 4,540, when the truth is that more than a quarter of these patients have already completed the established quarantine period.
Considering the current period, which is 7 days if the symptoms have already subsided, the number of confirmed positives in that time on the island has been 2,353. And extending it to 10 days, which is what it was until the end of December and which continues to be applied to patients in whom symptoms persist, the figure rises to 3,033. Thus, even counting some isolated case in which the disease is prolonged, the possible active cases would be very far from those 4,540 that are still being counted on the island.
The problem, according to the doctor and member of the primary care management team, Agustín González, is the difficulty of keeping these discharges up to date due to the exponential increase in cases. “We have been lagging behind for several days. Now we are dedicating a couple of people to picking up those patients who have already been there for seven days, because on the eighth day they can go out on the street, but we had not closed the process electronically”, he pointed out on Radio Lanzarote-Onda Cero.
For example, this Monday only 50 discharges were counted, when eight days ago the positives notified on the island were 265. “As soon as we can catch up with everything, it will be noticed”, he advanced, pointing out that in the coming days there will be a significant reduction in that official number of active cases, as patients can be called and the database updated.
Work-related discharges will be automated
The other front is in sick leave and work-related discharges, which not all patients require, but a significant number do, when the symptoms or simply the obligation to keep isolation prevents them from working during that period.
In the case of Lanzarote, Agustín González argues that this did not overwhelm primary care as much as in other areas of the Canary Islands and Spain, because the system had already been trying to reorganize to unload health centers, but from this Wednesday a new step will be taken.
“The work-related discharge is going to be automated, and at the same time the sick leave and the discharge will always be given, when it comes to patients under 45 years of age with mild symptoms or close contacts who have to quarantine because they are not vaccinated”, he explains.
Afterwards, they will be sent an SMS, with a link that they can activate if after seven days they still have symptoms, to cancel the discharge and continue on sick leave, in this case until a doctor prescribes it. For the rest, who are the vast majority, the discharge will be activated automatically from that day, without having to make a new visit to their health center.
In addition, it will not be necessary for them to go to their doctor, since this will be managed by the Covid team, as they had already begun to do to “unload primary care consultations”. “We took advantage of the fact that we had to remove the tracking because it was impossible”, González explained, thus confirming that the monitoring of close contacts of positives has ended, to whom calls or tests are no longer carried out, unless they are people at risk due to age or other medical factors.
"It's Covid unless proven otherwise"
“We are in community transmission. Now, any respiratory pathology is Covid unless proven otherwise”, says Agustín González, who states that they had to abandon tracking “by obligation”, given the impossibility of monitoring all cases.
In this regard, he recalls that the World Health Organization indicates that from 5% positivity in the tests that are carried out, it is already difficult to control the pandemic, and in Lanzarote last week the average exceeded 25%, and on Sunday it reached almost 40% of positives in the tests carried out that day.
Thus, the Covid team is now dedicated to other tasks to alleviate the pressure on primary care centers, and only serious or at-risk cases are monitored.
Added to this is another measure approved in the Canary Islands since this Tuesday, which will allow pharmacies to issue Covid certificates, for people who, due to age or any other reason, cannot download it through the Internet. “This also saturated the centers”, González emphasizes.
