“We came with stable figures but the cases increased, and we never got below a yellow risk index on the Harvard scale,” he said when analyzing the current situation in his country.

The Ministry of Public Health reported 264 Covid-19 cases throughout the country, 2,258 recoveries including 23 of them in critical care centers (CTI).

In addition to the recent entry of the department of Lavalleja into the red zone of contagion risk, in the last 24 hours Tacuarembo and Colonia went from yellow to orange.

Albornoz pointed out that “there is uncertainty, there is talk of a possible Delta Plus and I believe that we still have had to fight against the Covid-19 pandemic for a longer term.”

As the expert explained, the virus still has very intense periods in which other variants emerge which are different, and the community lacks sufficient immunity to control its spreading.

Meanwhile, a report from the National Emergency System indicated that 40 percent of Covid-19 cases in CTI were admitted without the disease’s symptoms, which they found out by a routine PCR test to all those who receive hospital medical attention due to other ailments.

According to the president of the Uruguayan Society of Intensive Care Medicine, Julio Pontet, those are Covid-19 patients with mild symptoms, because of the immunizing vaccination.

He added that 80 percent of those hospitalized in CTI were never vaccinated, in addition to their serious comorbidities.

Ponte agreed with the former coordinator of the Honorary Scientific Advisory Group Rafael Radi on the prematureness of declaring that Covid-19 has become endemic, which will be established when “we really achieve our new status quo, which we have not reached yet,” in the meantime, preventive health challenges remain ahead.

pgh/omr/jha/hr