The coronavirus that caused the pandemic in 2020 is still circulating around the world. It caused the death of more than 7 million people. But thanks to the benefits of vaccines, the impact of the infection was reduced. Worldwide, the number of new cases decreased by 44% between February 5 and March 3 as reported by the World Health Organization (WHO) compared to the previous 28 days.
In Bariloche, a team of researchers carried out a study that evaluated what happened to the mortality of the COVID-19 infection in relation to the characteristics of people, households and dwellings.
Before starting, the researchers took into account that previous studies had shown that there is an association between poor housing conditions, socioeconomic level and mortality. Then, they began to explore what territorial vulnerability was like and its relationship with mortality from COVID-19 in Bariloche.
The team was made up of Fernando Tortosa, Natalia Artola and Germán Guaresti, from the Medicine degree program at the National University of Río NegroFernando Perré, of the Provincial Hospital of Neuquén Castro Rendón, Gabriela Carrasco, from the Argentine Public Network for the Evaluation of Health Technologies, Gonzalo de Lusarreta, from the Ministry of Health of Río Negro, Dana Prandi, from the Bariloche Ramón Carrillo Program Area Hospital, and Ariel Izcovich, from the German Hospital of Buenos Aires. It was published in the Medicine magazine.
“We carried out a geolocation of the positive cases of COVID-19 that were tested from January 2020 to December 2021 and lived in the city. Then we assign them to the different areas of residence,” Tortosa said in dialogue with RIO NEGRO Diary. They carried out a three-step analysis to measure health inequity, using socioeconomic and access to services indicators. As a result, it was recorded that a total of 25,020 cases of COVID-19 had been diagnosed in Bariloche during the study period.
They observed that there was “significant variability in socioeconomic indicators between the different territorial delegations of the city,” the researchers wrote.
In the words of Tortosa: “We found an important variability between the different neighborhoods not only in terms of characteristics of the people, home and housing, but also in terms of infection and mortality, which was higher in the neighborhoods in the south of the city.”
A score was developed that allowed us to identify that the neighborhoods that had the worst indicators in population, household and housing also had worse results in terms of mortality from COVID-19.
These indicators are the percentages of unemployment, no literacy, households with unsatisfied basic needs, a higher percentage of homes with overcrowding, insufficient quality of construction and poor connection to services.
“There was a notable difference: the neighborhoods with greater deficits in the indicators also had higher mortality from COVID-19,” he noted.
The results of the study published “will help make visible how health inequity It is related not only to access to health but also to home, housing and people’s conditions and can weigh on mortality in different diseases and should be addressed«.
2024-03-31 04:00:00