“The first case of coronavirus in Colombia was identified in Bogotá. It is a 19-year-old woman who arrived in the city from Milan, Italy, on February 26. In this way, EL TIEMPO first announced the arrival of the pandemic virus in the country, on March 6, 2020.
Although an investigation by the National Institute of Health, in conjunction with the Humboldt Institute, the Imperial University of London and the ‘MCR Out Break’, after obtaining the first genome sequence of Sars-CoV-2, realized that the new coronavirus could reach the country the last week of February 2020, The truth is that the pandemic officially began in Colombia two years ago today.
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At that time, according to health specialist Pedro León Cifuentes, no one thought that the beginning of an unprecedented health process was being marked that would change the course of Colombians forever and in all aspects.
In fact, two days after the first diagnosis, the President of the Republic Iván Duque announced the first actions to face the threat in the national territory, at the same time that a count of cases was started that continued with a 34-year-old man in Buga and a 50-year-old woman in Medellin, who today-730 days later-exceed six million-officially-although There are indications that more than 90 percent of Colombians have had contact with the virus.
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And it was just ten days after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the pandemic on March 11, 2020 that in a televised speech the Minister of Health, Fernando Ruiz, and the director of the National Institute of Health (INS) , Martha Ospina, announced the first death from covid-19 in the country. It was a 58-year-old man who worked as a taxi driver in Cartagena and who presented symptoms two days after having transported several Italian tourists in his vehicle, forcing him to be hospitalized in a clinic in the capital of Bolívar, where He passed away on March 16.
Needless to say, the late report of this death evidenced the difficulties that existed then to verify with certainty the role of a new virus, which is why in this case a field investigation and laboratory analysis were required, given that the incipient tests diagnoses had been negative.
In short, the taxi driver Arnold Ricardo was the first victim of covid-19, which in less than 24 months it became the first cause of death in the country and to date accumulates 139,037 victims.
At the same time that those affected increased and restrictive measures began to be suggested, such as limiting the number of people who could meet and the circulation of older adults, the health system began three races against the virus: strengthen diagnostic capacity for covid- 19, expand the number of ICU beds, and acquire ventilators, which were already becoming scarce in the world.
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At the time, the INS became the first entity in Latin America to carry out PCR-type nuclear tests (Reverse Transcrypt Polymerase Chain Reaction), with which the virus could be diagnosed – not by ruling out – but within a context of certainty.
Quarantines and spikes
In these conditions, President Iván Duque issued decree 457 of 2020 with which he regulated the total quarantine to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, that with its extensions became among the longest restrictive measures on the planet, at the same time that adjustments were made to a health system in the face of what would be the first pandemic peak that, after a long wait, began its rise in the middle June, had its peak on August 20, and then stabilized in a kind of plateau that remained until mid-December of that year, just when the second peak began to take shape, which reached its maximum point on January 20, 2021.
In a tailspin in mid-March, people thought the pandemic was starting to subside. All this was happening while the ambitious National Vaccination Plan was being launched, which initially prioritized both the people at greatest risk and health personnel and which to date, more than a year later, has 77,983,480 doses applied. covering 81.5 percent of the population with one dose and 66.1 percent with two doses.
Despite the immunizations that allowed the hope of ending the pandemic, Cifuentes says that the illusion did not last long because in April there was already a growth in cases due to a mu variant – which unleashed a third peak – and by the middle of year it reached around thirty thousand cases per day.
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Again, says Cifuentes, months of calm came between August and November 2021, with relatively low figures, until in mid-December the omicron variant appeared and raised the pandemic curve almost vertically until mid-January 2022, surpassing all previous figures in case numbers, although deaths and serious cases were lower thanks to vaccination.
what leaves
Carlos Álvarez, an infectologist who coordinates covid studies for Colombia delegated by the WHO, says that the balance of the pandemic in the country in these two years is bittersweet because having left almost 140,000 deaths is a sensibly tragic outcome, but on the other hand, he states that the outlook could have been worse if the health measures had not been applied in the way they were done and that they even leave a stronger health system, which grew in record time in terms of technology, laboratories and assistance units.
In the same sense, he sees the National Vaccination Plan as a favorable component, as well as the possibility of integrating the different actors in the sector with the Government to serve the people.
On the other hand, the infectologist Carlos Eduardo Pérez states that at this time the pandemic has made certain points clear: human fragility, health as a treasure, inequality as a health determinant and that everyone can have the same susceptibility to a virus, the outcomes fatalities are defined by social factors and not only by the disease. He insists that too the pandemic undressed selfishness, informality and indifference to pain.
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The former Minister of Health Gabriel Riveros says that these two years leave a great learning about the importance of self-care and individual and collective responsibilities regarding well-being, in addition to the need to insist on recovering the value of primary care (PC) and the integration of the public and the private, that put the welfare of the people above any other interest.
In addition, health worker Cifuentes states that The pandemic revealed many shortcomings in the health system that must be addressed promptly.
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For his part, Álvarez emphasizes that the pandemic is not over, but that it will surely pass into an endemic phase with new epidemic curves that will force a review of the frequency of vaccines against covid-19 and their priorities. Of course, the new realities require maintaining what has been achieved in the health system and strengthening what is still lacking in terms of surveillance, promotion, prevention, and care. For now, he insists that The country must continue to vaccinate and apply biosecurity measures in the coming weeks, since the risk is still latent.
Finally, Pérez says that although vaccination was shown to be a safe and reliable act, it also hints at inequity and foresees a time of indifference, “a pandemic fatigue where pain and vulnerability will be forgotten and suffering and the pain to be able to continue”, concludes the expert.
HEALTH UNIT
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