Is the virus slowing down as incidence rates have dropped 10 points in five days?

The Canary Islands may have exceeded the crest of the fifth wave of the coronavirus if the next few days follow the pattern of the last few. Yesterday 564 new cases were detected, the lowest number of daily infections since July 13th, when 503 were reported. However, when this wave and increase of infections started, everyone jumped on the fact that “no-one is dying and no-one is in hospital”, but that is no longer the case as the rate of both has increased.

There have been 11 fatalities in the last three days, the deadliest in the pandemic since mid-April, and 45 more people admitted to hospital wards and ICU with Covid. This is following the global trend of this new evolution of the virus combined with protection from vaccination, and in fact, the WHO announced that cases in Europe have now exceeded 60 million people and 1.2 million have died.

This increased pressure on the health system is a worry, as the percentage of occupancy of ICU beds on the islands has risen to 19.3%. In Tenerife ICU’s have 30% of their beds occupied by Covid patients, while in Gran Canaria 16.4% of the ICUs are dedicated to the care of patients with coronavirus, which has led the risk indicator to be raised to high.

It is important to remember that high-risk is when over 15% of ICU beds are occupied by Covid patients, which is not total occupancy as there are other patients from various illnesses or accidents that are in the rest.

Yesterday, for the second consecutive day, daily infections fell in the Canary Islands with 564 new positives recorded, almost 10% less than the day before and 40% less than on Saturday, when 947 new cases were registered in the islands.

The IA7 has dropped ten points since last Wednesday and yesterday stood at 247 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, while over 14 days, it stayed under 500 at 498 cases. Since the beginning of the pandemic, 81,094 infections have been found on the islands, of which 65,596 correspond to people already cured, while 14,665 are active with the virus.

The presence of the Delta (Indian) variant continues to grow in the Canary Islands. Between July 16th and 22nd, its presence was found in 80.5% of the 1,274 sequenced samples, which represents an increase of 3% compared to the previous week, according to the report issued yesterday by the Ministry of Health.

This has displaced the Alpha (British) variant, only present in 5.6% of the positives analyzed, half the number in the previous week, while the probable infected with the Beta (South African) and gamma (Brazilian) only account for 0.6% of the cases studied.