Bolivia confirms presence of omicron and infections rise by 77%

The Government of Bolivia reported this Monday that in the last week there was an increase of 77% in cases of COVID-19 compared to the previous period and made official the presence of the omicron variant in the country in the middle of the fourth wave of infections.

LOOK: Bolivia registers a new daily record with 11,190 coronavirus infections

“We have confirmed this detection and, therefore, we can say that the omicron variant is circulating (in Bolivia); still the predominant variant is the delta ”, asserted the Minister of Health, Jeyson Auza, during the presentation of the weekly report on the pandemic in La Paz.

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The minister had already classified the arrival of the variant as “inexorable” although the confirmation of the National Institute of Health Laboratories (Inlasa) was lacking, despite the fact that a study by experts from the state-run Universidad Mayor de San Andrés de La Paz (UMSA ) had already reported that finding the previous week.

INCREASE IN CASES

The report highlights that Bolivia reached a “record of infections with 60,801 cases” in the first week of the year.

Most were reported in the departments of Santa Cruz, Cochabamba and Tarija, which account for 59.4%, 10.6% and 7.5%, respectively, of national infections, the minister said.

Bolivia closed the last week of 2021 with 34,429 infections and reported 60,801 new cases in the first of 2022, so “there is an increase of 77%,” Auza remarked in his presentation to the media.

However, the weekly report establishes “a rebound in vaccination” with 744,047 doses, the highest since the beginning of this work almost a year ago to reach 10,572,568 vaccines used between first, second and third doses, in addition to inoculation vaccines single to over 5 years.

According to the Bolivian minister, vaccination coverage in those over 18 years of age is 72.8% in the first doses and 61% in the second, although he did not provide information on the percentages in minors between 5 and 17 years of age with whom the The country’s vaccinable population reaches about 10.2 million.

Bolivia has faced the fourth wave of COVID-19 infections since last October, however it has experienced a significant increase in cases since the end of December until last week the daily record was reached, which exceeded 11,000 daily infections.

Auza said that people who suffer from the complications of the disease to require intensive care in hospitals or die “are those who have not been vaccinated.”

Bolivia established since January 1 the requirement of the vaccination card as a requirement for various procedures and entry into public and private spaces; However, this requirement was postponed until the 26th of this month to avoid crowds at the vaccination points.

In addition to the increase in vaccination, the collapse of some nasal antigen sampling points is also noted, although the Government indicated that it distributed “a sufficient amount of tests” to the different departmental health services.

On the eve, the country presented 5,334 new infections and reported 26 deaths.

Since the arrival of the pandemic in March 2020, Bolivia has accumulated 19,983 deaths and 677,166 confirmed cases of the disease, while 102,310 are the infections that remain active.

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Deshawn