Friday, March 29

The gap in statistics: the two covid-free towns in the province of Alicante that have not been for months


“Islands in an ocean of contagion”; “covid-free territories”; or “towns where the coronavirus does not enter” are some of the adjectives that have been used in the last year and a half to refer to the localities, mostly small towns in the interior of the province, who had managed to escape SARS-CoV 2 during the pandemic so far. Inevitably, the questions to try to understand the causes seemed endless: What will its citizens do that is not done in the rest of the municipalities? What preventive measures are you taking so that the virus does not reach your homes? How do they keep the counter to zero despite tourism and when all the surrounding towns are at extreme risk? And, especially in recent weeks, how is it possible that the omicron tentacles still respect these territories when infections continue to grow and there are people who are being reinfected for the second or third time? The reality, many times, is simpler than all that.

Sad in Guadalest. DAVID REVENGES


The gap in the contagion statistics handled by the Ministry of Health, which large cities have already complained about repeatedly, is also distorting the data from smaller towns. The best example is what happens in Confrides and at Guadalest Castle, both located in the Low Marina. Official data still indicates them as the only populations in the province that have not had infections during these almost two years of health crisis, despite the fact that in both there has been at least one dozen positives among its neighbors, the first detected more than a year ago. These two towns, located in the Vall de Guadalest and with 187 and 217 residents registered, respectively, are the only two with more than one hundred inhabitants in the Community that, according to Health, would not have had a single positive, ahead of three other villages in the same situation: Puebla de San Miguel and Sempere, in the province of Valencia, and Sacañet, in Castellón, whose population is reduced to 62, 34 and 67 residents.

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“We do not understand why we continue to appear in the statistics with zero cases when there have been several infected citizens here and even one had to be admitted to the Regional Hospital,” explains the mayor of Guadalest, Enrique Ponsoda. The councilor of Cs points out that the first case that occurred in the town dates back to December 2020, when a group of neighbors who were fond of hiking were making a route with friends from various towns and ate in a bar in Sella, where it occurred. an outbreak with many affected. “Our medical office is an appendix to the one in Benimantell, which in turn belongs to the Callosa health center. We, at first, thought that our cases could be registered in Callosa, but later the data of the other towns of the valley, such as Benifato, Benimantell or Beniardá, began to come out, but ours, no, “maintains the mayor, who acknowledges that not having had a contagion in these two years, as Health says, would have been almost a miracle: “And, more so in an area where the 1,200 residents of the valley live together and we all have a relationship.”

“The system is so overwhelmed even here in small towns that doctors can’t keep up.” This Lack of personnel and means in Primary Care, with a single doctor to attend to all the residents of the five towns of the Vall, attributes the mayor of Confrides, the popular Rubén Picó, that the contagions of this municipality continue without appearing in the statistics: «In the end, the doctors They are there to heal people, not to create bureaucracy. And we are privileged, because ours knows us all »he points out. Picó explains that in Confrides “there was a case at the beginning of everything and now, with this omicron, there have also been four or five cases after Christmas.” Its city council has twice carried out rapid, voluntary and free tests on all registered residents to detect possible asymptomatic cases. The last time, on January 12 and 13, at least one positive was detected.

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The two mayors do not give much importance to the fact of not appearing in the official statistics. “The important thing is that we have not lost any neighbors due to this pandemic and that those who have been through it have been more or less well,” they agree. But they wonder that, if in two such small towns the data does not fit, “what will the gap be like in the larger ones?”


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