Nearly half of the people who have tested positive for Covid in Lanzarote in the last two weeks are over 65 years old, which means that the disease has begun to affect the highest risk group. This was revealed this Tuesday by the president of the Cabildo, María Dolores Corujo, who has made a call for citizen responsibility in the face of “very worrying and excessively high indicators.”
“The contagion figures are dangerously approaching the peak experienced during the summer, but with a crucial difference: the number of people over 65 who are being infected,” she warned, emphasizing that this makes the data “much more worrying” than those recorded between the end of August and the beginning of September.
“This incidence rate in people over 65 is especially worrying, because as has been dramatically proven, they are much more vulnerable to the effects of Covid,” she recalled.
In the case of Tías, she explained that it is experiencing the “most worrying” situation, since of the cases confirmed in the last two weeks in the municipality, “67% correspond to people over 65 years of age.” “Of every three people infected, two are over 65 years old”, she stressed. And a similar situation is experienced in Arrecife, where that percentage reaches 64%.
“San Bartolomé is in third place in this worrying ranking,” she added, noting that in this municipality, 60% of infections have occurred “in the most vulnerable age group.” Behind it is Yaiza, with 55%.
Regarding the other three municipalities on the island -Teguise, Tinajo and Haría-, the president referred to the data from the previous day, when none had registered cases in older people in the previous two weeks. However, in the latest detailed report from the Ministry of Health released this afternoon, the situation has changed, since cases in older people were also detected the day before in Teguise and especially in Tinajo.
"Unfortunately we have not yet reached the peak"
“The figures are worrying, both the level of infections and the number of older people affected. Moving in these figures also implies the need to make an extraordinary effort on the part of healthcare personnel,” recalled the president, pointing out that on Monday alone it was necessary to monitor 535 people who had had close contact with a positive case, and that this figure has risen to “almost 700 new contacts” this Tuesday.
In addition, she has warned that “unfortunately we have not yet reached the peak”, and that cases will continue to grow. “The infections that we are detecting at this time correspond fundamentally to the first days of the Christmas holidays and over the next few days, this figure, whatever we do, will continue to rise”, she warned.
“However,” she added, “there is much we can do so that in just a few days the situation begins to be controlled, flattened and reversed”. On the one hand, she pointed out that “the main and most important thing, and what we cannot stop doing, is to become aware that we are experiencing a pandemic”, because she believes that “sometimes we have a false perception of security, without being fully aware of what it means.”
“Every time we interact with someone we have the possibility of suffering a contagion. Any of the people in our family nucleus may have had contact with someone infected and introduced the virus into our house. Any of the people who make up our close circle of friends can become infected and infect us. I, any of you, can become infected in a chat on a terrace and come home and infect the family. This is not something that happens to others, it is something that can happen to any of us, but we continue to behave as if we were invulnerable, as if luck were always going to accompany us. And we are bothered by the restrictions and we do not understand that it is not the time to fill the sports fields or normalize culture”, she warned during the press conference in which she announced the new restrictions agreed by the Cabildo and the seven town councils of the island.
“We have to understand that we are going to continue suffering the pandemic for a few more months, no matter how much we have started with the vaccination process. We are going through the worst moment, the most dangerous”, she insisted, also pointing out that the risk of contagion “is greater in winter”, because we spend “more hours in closed spaces”. “Now more than ever it is necessary that we take extreme precautions”, she asked the citizens of the island