Ómicron and detachment from the mask facilitated the new wave of COVID-19 in Ecuador, indicates an epidemiologist

Entering the world stage ómicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 and the detachment from the mask and other biosecurity measures made it easier to unleash the new wave of infections that is registered in Ecuador and in several countries in the region.

This was specified to Eph the Ecuadorian epidemiologist Catalina Yépez, who assured that the end of the pandemic, which in principle the world health authorities calculated for next March, will be postponed for a while longer.

“We are definitely in a new wave” of infections, which came with the entry of the omicron variant at a time when the delta was still active in the world, added Yépez, a former adviser to the Pan American Health Organization (OPS).

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According to her, ómicron already predominates in the country given the high rate of contagion, since official statistics counted more than 11,000 new cases of covid-19 last Saturday.

And it is thate every hundred samples taken, 50 are positive, which represents a very high community transmission, just when it was thought that the pandemic “we were already controlling it,” he added.

Only the previous week, 15 million omicron infections had been registered in the world, although mortality has not increased, Yépez said, specifying that Vaccines have saved many lives.

However, he said that the message that with the vaccines the exercise that has meant facing the pandemic was ending was not the most appropriate, since it was not taken into account that new variants could appear.

“Definitely, with the entry to the world stage of the omicron variant, the end of the pandemic is necessarily postponed”, affirmed the specialist, who also sees other factors so that the disease has not been overcome.

“As long as we have this inequity in access to vaccines worldwide, where there are countries that have only one digit in the vaccination curve (such as in Africa or Haiti), there will always be the possibility that other variants will be generated,” he added. .

“We will not get out of the pandemic until we reach a significant percentage of vaccination worldwide” and other biosecurity measures such as the use of the mask, whose detachment has also favored the current wave, added.

In addition, he highlighted the recent recommendation made by the World Health Organization (WHO) to the Advisory Committee of Experts on Immunization to develop a vaccine that is capable of facing omicron and other potential variants that may arise in the future.

It is about “a vaccine that is more powerful than the ones we have been receiving” and that ensures that the coronavirus loses its ability to do damage.

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Since the 1970s, when the World Immunization Program was created, the fight against diseases such as smallpox, measles, rubella, polio, which mainly affected children, was successful thanks to vaccines and an immunization scheme that has had two or three doses, Yépez recalled after pointing out that this path also seems to be the right one at present. (I)