Osakidetza will give less data on the pandemic, although the number of infections increases
- Osakidetza will no longer publish from Friday on its website the daily newsletter that until now offered all the data on Covid-19. Among other things, we will not have information about the R0 reproduction rate to measure the level of contamination for a whole week. The Department of Health of the Basque Country will also not provide information on weekends.
On the same day that Nekane Murga publicly expressed concern about the number of coronavirus infections in the CAPV, Osakidetza has posted on its website a notice announcing that it will offer fewer daily data on the epidemiological situation: “The information will be provided in summary form, keeping the essential information,” he explained.
Thus, you will remove the full Covid-19 newsletter that you have previously published on your website and offer it only once a week. This newsletter, among other things, reported on a daily basis the rate of coronavirus (R0) reproduction. In fact, this rate is above the number “1” since the Ordizia outbreak, as cases of contagion are multiplying – when the R0=1 is higher, it means that the pandemic is not stabilized and is now at 1.54.
The Department of Health will offer from July 17 a summary of the previous day: number of PCR tests performed, positive and their distribution by territories and municipalities, as well as “distribution by sex and age”. In an interview with Radio Euskadi, Murga stressed that what they are most concerned about is pollution among young people: "They can be hard to control."
In addition, hospital admissions and cases that have been admitted to the ICU will be reported daily. On the other hand, no information will be provided on weekends and the data for those two days will be transferred to Monday.
“Bad news”
It is not the first time that health officials have changed the form and criteria of information, and every time there has been a great deal of confusion, which in the opinion of many causes difficulties in reading data.
Following the announcement by Osakidetza, the researcher at Ikerbasque Ugo Mayor Ikerbasque and one of the Basque experts who knows the evolution of the coronavirus best, said on Twitter that it is "bad news". “Public information will be reduced at a time when awareness of the situation is more important than ever,” he wrote.
According to Mayor, whatever name is given to patients identified with COVID-19, at this moment “we must highlight where the curve is going in the CAPV: and right now it looks very bad”.
