The increase in positive cases of coronavirus in Lanzarote is generating problems in the primary care of the island's Health Centers. The lack of antigen tests in pharmacies has meant that many people, without symptoms, are going to health centers to have it done. “We are seeing what we have never seen before”, said the director of primary care in Lanzarote, Aniuska Sutil, on Radio Lanzarote – Onda Cero.
“The number of cases is increasing exponentially”, says Sutil, who despite this situation does state that, for the moment, it is not being reflected in the hospital, where she currently has “few patients”.
From Primary Care they urge citizen collaboration to be able to bend the sixth wave, ensuring that “they need the collaboration of the people”. Sutil maintains that in addition to the people who come to take an antigen test without needing it, other people go to the health center “because the tracker has not called them”, knowing that they are a close contact. “We all know, since the pandemic began, that if one is a close contact, what one has to do is stay at home and wait”, she adds.
In addition, she emphasizes that when a close contact tests negative in the first PCR test, “it does not give them the freedom to do whatever they want”, and that they must be isolated until they have the second negative test, after five days.
However, Aniuska states that the majority of those who test positive “do not even have symptoms”, or that if they do, they are minimal. Despite this, she assures that “there will be more” positives in the coming dates, and that while not long ago she received “one or two positives from private laboratories”, she is currently receiving emails “with more than ten or fifteen positives”.
The hiring list of nurses and doctors, exhausted
“Health centers have to continue to treat the rest of the diseases that exist”, says the director of primary care, although she assures that the population of Lanzarote has been “exemplary” during the course of the pandemic, and that on this occasion “they will be too”.
Regarding the medical follow-up of positive cases, Aniuska Sutil details that there is a team of doctors who are doing that work, although priority is being given “to vulnerable or elderly people”, while in young cases with few symptoms, they are following up with greater distance in time.
“We do not have infinite doctors. The hiring list of nurses and doctors is exhausted”, she explains, and adds that what the Ministry of Health does not want is “to take doctors out of their consultation to follow up on young people without symptoms”.
Finally, Aniuska Sutil values the “enormous” work of her fellow microbiologists, as well as all those in primary care, who are doing “everything possible to change this wave”.
