Nearly 8,000 ICU patients in Colombia, highest number in pandemic (May 24)

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Intensive Care Units (ICU) in Colombia reached their highest occupancy point on Monday since the beginning of the pandemic, with a total of 7,857 severe Covid-19 patients, sources from the Ministry of Health said on Tuesday.

“Yesterday was the hardest day of the pandemic in Colombia in hospitalized patients. About 7,857 were hospitalized in an ICU for Covid-19,” said Colombian Deputy Health Minister Luis Alexander Moscoso.

At the previous peak, recorded at Christmas, there were some 6,200 patients, but ICUs across the country have been at capacity for several weeks. Currently, of the 11,319 available throughout the country, almost 8,000 are occupied.

During Easter week, Colombia entered the third wave of the pandemic, the worst so far, which has lasted much longer than the previous ones and which made April the most lethal month, and May has already surpassed it, with almost every day reporting more than 450 deaths and even more than 500 on some days.

On Monday, the Ministry of Health reported 483 new deaths, and on Sunday, a record number of cases was registered with 21,669 in one day. In total, Colombia has more than 85,207 deaths and almost 3,250,000 cases.

At the same time, 8,425,588 vaccines against Covid-19 had been applied in the country, of which 3,147,478 correspond to second doses.

THE DOUBLE EFFECT OF THE PROTESTS

“We had been experiencing a decrease in cases since mid-April (…), and we thought we were going to have a downward trend as we expected, but then came the effect of the protests,” explained Moscoso.

Colombia has been undergoing almost four weeks of massive protests that show social discontent with government policies, coinciding with one of the worst moments of the pandemic.

According to the Ministry of Health, the effect can be seen “very clearly” in Bogota, where “both cases and mortality have increased after the events.”

However, this “protest effect” of which the Government speaks has not been seen in the department of Valle del Cauca and its capital, Cali, the epicenter of the protests and where large concentrations and marches have taken place.

The vice-minister alludes to the decrease of cases and deaths in the last weeks in this city to the fact that “Cali was very affected in its mobility, so although some people were protesting, the city of Cali was paralyzed in all its activities.”

This stoppage of activities, which continues to some extent today, has contributed to a “considerable” decrease in the number of infections. However, it is also true that, due to the situation created in the city, with blockades at the entrances and exits and riots in some neighborhoods, the sampling has decreased, and there is no “clarity of the figures”.

“Our concern is that once the city of Cali returns to moderately regular activities that increase (of cases) will return,” confesses the vice minister.

THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL?

The Minister of Health, Fernando Ruiz, spoke last week of a second upturn in the third peak because the wave does not seem to be decreasing for almost two months. Still, the government expects that this weekend, with the beginning of June, “significant decreases” will start to be seen in large part of the country.

Bogotá and the departments of Cundinamarca, Boyacá, Nariño, and Santander, which are currently and proportionally the hardest hit, will continue to be significantly affected, which will not allow seeing such a “rapid decrease” at a national level.

But Vice Minister Moscoso is confident that the light at the end of the tunnel will begin to be seen: “we are projecting a decrease as of next week”, he assured.