Covid exceeds a thousand deaths in La Rioja in full escalation of its incidence

From the valley to a new plateau in just one month. SARS-CoV-2 is here to stay and, although without the horror of a not-too-distant past, its terrifying claws have transformed into small claws that are sometimes too sharp for the most vulnerable people. La Rioja has just added two new fatalities to the dramatic covid statistics – one in May and another in June – which bring the terrible record to 1,002 lives taken since the health nightmare began in March 2020.

The two new deaths raise the figure for 2024 to 10, a trend very similar to that of last year, which ended with 29, nothing to do with the three previous years in which the virus spread terror: 589 deaths in 2020 , 266 in 2021 and 108 in 2022.

Too much pain accumulated by a ‘bug’ that with different faces, via mutations, tries to ride again, as statistics confirm, because the epidemiological radar does not take its eye off it.

«We see that the incidence continues to increase. In week 22, the last one in May, it was at 62.18 cases per 100,000 inhabitants and in week 23, that of June 3 to 9, the last one available, we are at 100.18 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, when the last time “We had a peak of 69 cases per 100,000 last January,” admits the general director of Public Health, Eva Martínez Ochoa, who details the incidence in the community in recent weeks: 3.45 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in week 17. (the last one in April), 10.36 in the next two, 13.82 in the 20th to climb to 24, 18 in the 21st, to 62.18 in the 22nd (the last one in May) and place today in the aforementioned 100.18, an increase that has led the rate to multiply by ten during the last month.

Waiting for FLiRT

The rise in infections does not translate into a massive number of hospital admissions, although, nevertheless, this record does not stop escalating either – the Carlos III report estimates a hospitalization rate for covid of 4.2 cases per one hundred thousand inhabitants in the week of June 3 to 9, five times more than in the first week of May (0.85%).

In La Rioja, the trend has also been increasing. So far in June alone, the number of hospitalized people has risen to 27, although yesterday only 11 remained, all of them in the ward, since it does not seem that the rise in incidence is accompanied by an increase in serious cases. In fact, in the aforementioned national report, Sivira (Acute Respiratory Infection Surveillance System), it is detailed that of those hospitalized with covid, 30.2% have pneumonia, 4.1% enter the ICU and another 8.4%. % ends up dying.

The variant of the virus identified in the greatest proportion in Spain is BA.2.86, known as pirola, a subvariant of the omicron lineage, as is FLiRT, the name with which a new threat has been named that is actually made up of five different alterations. of the virus –KP.2, KP.3, JN.1.7, JN.1.1 and KP.1.1–, all of them descendants of JN.1. FLiRT first appeared in the United States and in that short period of time it has already become dominant in that country. Although it has also been detected in Spain, specifically in the Basque Country, Catalonia and Galicia, in La Rioja there is no official confirmation at the moment, but its presence is almost certain. “It is probably circulating as it is in our environment, we do not have to have a different situation,” admits Dr. Martínez Ochoa, who, after considering that pharmacy tests would continue to be effective for its detection, explains that “although they do “It is believed that it is more transmissible, it does not seem to be involved in a greater severity of cases.”

Its symptoms, not at all unknown: fever, cough, congestion and runny nose, sore throat, muscle pain and headache, chills, difficulty breathing, fatigue… And, sometimes, loss of smell or taste and gastrointestinal symptoms (diarrhea, nausea or vomiting).