The director of the Canary Islands Health Service (SCS), Conrado Domínguez, one of the main advisors to the Government during the pandemic, has posted on his Twitter profile as to why the Canary Islands are “far from” the transition from Covid pandemic to endemic or flu, as well as on the consequences that this issue could have in terms of public health, to try and make the people understand the situation better from a medical perspective.
He clarifies that a disease is considered to be endemic "when its behaviour and evolution become predictable", which doesn’t mean that it becomes harmless, highlighting that endemic conditions such as malaria or tuberculosis are the cause of thousands of deaths every year.
At this point, he indicates that mass vaccination has contributed to the severity of Covid being "much less than last winter", but that Covid-19 is still a relevant cause of mortality and hospitalization.
This is why the large number of coronavirus cases we have experienced "has excessively stressed Primary Care in hospitals" even though as a variant Omicron is less severe, “it is the sheer volume of infections that has had an impact on Hospitals causing more Covid patients in hospitals than in previous waves.”
However, he points out that if the objective is to live with the virus without adopting the strict measures, it will be necessary to “assume a number of deaths and hospitalizations”, and asks: “Is there a reasonable number?”
Also, it raises the question of whether the health service is "sufficiently equipped" to care of Covid patients "without reducing the capacity to respond to the treatment of other patients with other pathologies."
On the other hand, he explains that Covid “is not behaving like a flu” because the number of cases is now higher than in any other wave of this disease which, he clarifies, was already saturating hospitals, and at the moment, the coronavirus has not shown signs of behaving like a seasonal virus either.
Domínguez also said that he hopes that the virus has taught the public that we must be cautious, and concludes that "the data tells us that we are far from classing it as an endemic or flu", concluding that, "the measures that have been effective so far, along with vaccination, will continue to be the best tool to combat Covid”.
