COVID-19 | In two weeks we will see the effect of infections in the end of the year parties

“Peru has exceeded its maximum peak of cases of COVID-19 of the entire pandemic, with a daily average of over 10,000 cases, the breaking point being the rapid increase on December 25 ”. This is how Juan Carbajal, data analyst and former member of the OpenCovid-Peru platform, began a series of messages on Twitter in which – accompanied by a series of graphs – he showed the sharp increase in cases of new infections registered by the Ministry of Health (Minsa) throughout the country, in recent days.

Based on official figures, the engineer Carbajal details that in Lima the record of daily infections was broken: 4,904 cases registered on March 22, 2021 versus 7,028 registered on January 6, 2022. In the case of Cusco, on 8 582 cases were registered in January, surpassing the 525 reported on August 26, 2020.

“These figures are striking, but the weekly average is still below the previous waves”, warns Trade César Munayco, executive director of Public Health Surveillance of the National Center for Epidemiology, Prevention and Control of Diseases (CDC). Consider that, although useful, the daily data contains a lot of noise, because it can constantly go up and down.

“If these data are analyzed well, the increase occurred in week 52. Almost all regions –with the exception of Huancavelica– had peaks of different magnitudes. The average of week 51 was 27,029 cases, and in week 52 it almost doubled to 47,815 ″, explains to this newspaper.

Ómicron and the parties

According to Munayco, the peak of week 51 reflected the Christmas celebrations. The one of week 52 shows, in part, what happened for the New Year. “People who were infected at parties are going to continue to infect, probably until the second or third week of January. Only in about two weeks will we have a better idea of ​​what the effect of the holidays has been and see what is going to happen ”.

The specialist recalls that there are already more than 14 regions in which the presence of the omicron variant, which would also explain the drastic increase in infections.

The numbers

• 82% of infections registered in Lima They are for the variant omicron. Until a week ago it was only 53% of all cases.
• 17.2% of the target population – men and women over 12 years of age – in Peru have already received their third dose. That equals 4′818.278.

More coverage is missing

• The population most vulnerable to COVID-19 it is that of older adults. According to the Minsa, only 51% of those over 60 have received the third dose.

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