The holidays are taking their toll on the island, and since December 24th until today, Lanzarote has detected a total of 1030 new positives, of which 804 are active. Also, 32 patients remain hospitalized due to covid and 2 people have died so far as of the time this article is written. On the other hand, the contagion curve at 14 days has skyrocketed above 550 contagions per 100 thousand inhabitants, it should be remembered that the safety limit is 50, eleven times less. In short, this third wave is being much more devastating than the summer one.
The big question: Why?
The tracking service of the Molina Orosa Hospital confirms that the vast majority of infections have occurred in family environments, the three major Christmas events brought families together in environments of extreme relaxation, without masks, with physical contact and large groups.
But how is it possible that Covid entered homes?
The population went out to party environments, bars, restaurants, pubs, etc. In these environments, relaxation and lack of control caused the virus to spread among those present. These people then took the Coronavirus to their homes, and the homes acted as centrifuges. Infections occurred in family environments, then people returned to the leisure areas, where it spread again, and then back to homes to celebrate the next Christmas date. We were like this from December 24th, through the new year, until January 6th. An exponential growth that has led us to an unprecedented crisis.
To this we must add that bubble groups of 6 or 10 people were confused with being in many groups of six, or ten. The concept of a bubble group was to spend Christmas with the same people constantly, and yet, the people of Lanzarote stayed with many groups of six in six, on different days, so the measure never had any effect. Avoiding the fine was confused with avoiding the spread of the disease.
When will the effects of this brutal third wave stop raging?
It's all mathematics and social behavior. If the population accepts the confinement measures, and complies with the three M's (Mask 2 Meters and Hand washing), the curve should normalize in three or four weeks, returning to the desired 50 accumulated cases in 14 days and 100 thousand inhabitants, in fact last Thursday the 14th the speed of spread of the virus decreased, just the day on which the greatest spread was reached with 125 positives in one day, and today we are on the plateau of the curve to begin to flatten it.
Another question is the hospital effects, in this case the contagion curve is leaving more and more patients in the hospital, some reach the ICU and, unfortunately, people die. We can lower the curve and increase hospital admissions. In this case we have to take into account that the disease arises on average 5 days after the contagion occurs, and the hospital admission, another 9 days later on average. Hospital discharges are difficult to predict because they depend a lot on each patient. And this data is the one that will be corrected later. We have hard days ahead as a society.
What lesson should we learn?
The fatigue caused by such a prolonged crisis, and by the economic situation, may make us believe that we are living a different reality from the one we have. The world is being devastated by a global pandemic that also affects us, exactly like the rest of Europe. We have to understand that as long as the disease spreads in a society there will be neither health nor economy, therefore we have to modify our behaviors until the population is immunized by approximately 70%. And, finally, we must understand that we have to listen to our health authorities, and not discuss or interpret the rules so lightly, in Asia (Japan, China, Korea, Vietnam...) the disease is being controlled and the economy has been reborn for months.
Finally, and as part of the situation, thank God we have the spectacular tracking team that we have, it is everyone's responsibility to take care of it.
