The latest epidemiological report from the Ministry of Health has the incidence rates over 7 and 14 days for the Canary Islands at either red or purple. Due to the huge increase in cases Tenerife, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, El Hierro and La Palma are now at high or very high risk, and everything indicates that the trend will continue after 469 positives were reported yesterday, the third highest number of the pandemic, and active cases have doubled in a week to over 5,800 in the islands.
Even so, the occupation of hospital beds and ICUs remain at low risk, given that most of the infections are occurring in younger people. However, both are slowly increasing. In fact, in a week the Canary Islands have gone from having 32 patients in the ICU due to Covid to 39 yesterday, the youngest of them is 21 years old, and from treating 207 infected patients in hospitals to 245 yesterday (Monday), among them a young male of 18 years of age.
In the last week, the archipelago has gone from having an IA7 of 97.70 to 138.15, while over 14 days it has increased from 155.10 to 237.18, in both cases placing the islands at high risk according to the scale of indicators for health alerts.
By islands, Tenerife maintains both parameters at very high risk, with 189.42 for the IA7 and 351.39 for the IA14. Fuerteventura is also at the same, at very high risk, with an IA7 of 160.36 and an IA14 of 278.12. Gran Canaria’s data has also worsened in the last week. At the end of June the island had 685 active cases and yesterday it almost doubled to 1,366 in 12 days. The 7-day and 14-day incidence rates are at high risk with 103.68 and 156.05 respectively.
As the SCS have continually been warning, the age of Covid patients being admitted to hospital has been decreasing. In the ICU at Candelaria hospital in Tenerife, the average age of Covid patients is 53 years old, as it ranges from a patient of 21 and to the oldest at 82.
However, as hospital sources explain, the important thing is not the mean (the sum of the ages and dividing it by the number of patients) but the median, that is, the value that is in the middle, and that is 47 years. On wards, the mean age of Covid patients is 49 with one of 18 and another of 95.
In the Maternal Insular Hospital in Gran Canaria, there are Covid patients on wards of 20 and 82 years old. In the Dr Negrín wards, the mean is 51 years old - from 24 to 91 years - and in the ICU it is 57 (patients aged from 36 to 76 years old) and in the HUC in Tenerife, in wards the mean is 48 years old (from 21 to 92) and in the ICU it is 52 years old with Covid patients aged 31 to 74 years old.
Possible level 4 in Tenerife:
As reported yesterday by the Efe news agency, among the conclusions of the Public Health committee’s epidemiological report carried out on July 8th, to request extra measures for Tenerife such as the curfew or the closure of parks and beaches at night, it stands out that the evolution of the epidemic on the island is “Ascending at a rapid rate with high risk” and with “uncontrolled community transmission”.
Yesterday the president of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres, in a radio interview with COPE, did not rule out that Tenerife would rise to alert Level 4 this week if the number of infections were not controlled. If this is the indicator they are using to decide alert levels, then the signs are not looking good.
