Should we change the way we count positives on Covid-19?

The omic variant of Covid-19 is leaving figures never before seen throughout the pandemic. In Spain alone, 789,409 positives were registered in the last week. In the face of the outbreak of contagion, some experts are already beginning to ask themselves whether it is useful to continue counting the number of infected people one by one, as has been done so far, or whether we should start using other indicators such as the flu.

Should the surveillance system be changed? How to count the positive cases at Covid-19?

“We will probably have to establish an epidemiological surveillance system, a sentinel network very similar to the one we do with the flu,” says the microbiologist at the University of Navarra’s clinic, José Luis Del Pozo.

I mean, without having to test everyone. Salvador Peiró, Public Health researcher, assures that “with this method they would give more accurate numbers than with a system of trying to count all the cases because we leave ourselves to close contacts and a lot of people along the way”.

In addition, another aspect that is also raised is that if most of the infected do not get sick and almost all of us are vaccinated or immunized the COVID-19, the most important indicator happens to be how the serious cases evolve. “is really what we care about to take action”

So the accumulated incidence would lose strength. However, until the coronavirus is established as a seasonal virus (and for that it needs to be between one and two points above the flu), there will be no agreement on how to count the positives in COVID.

Experts still say that “we are far from thinking that we are facing a type of flu. In 2019 about 1,500 people died from this disease and that number is only the one that has been had with the COVID in the last month of December”.