Tenerife becomes the island that spends the most time at risk level 4

Although the effective application time is, for the moment, similar to that of Lanzarote during the first months of the year, the effectiveness of the most restrictive measures of the Canarian traffic light has not been the same on both islands. Lanzarote stayed 37 days allowing only the meetings of two people, closing shops and restaurants at 6:00 p.m. and without gyms. And with this, it was able to reduce its incidence to 7 days view by 87%. It went from having 360 cases per 100,000 per inhabitant on January 21 to reaching 47.5 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, that is, improving the optimal threshold. His healthcare pressure, which was the highest on the island and peaked shortly after imposing level 4 (on January 28), reached 62 patients and plummeted to 29 on that March 1. Although it is true that the care pressure in the ICU was barely reduced – when the level fell, it was still at extreme risk – it was in a scenario of very low transmission of the virus, so that the transition to level 3 (which was also more restrictive than the current one), guaranteed health services to be able to care for patients who had to stay longer in the ICU.

The 43 days of Tenerife at level 4 have been very different. Neither the interior of the hotel business has closed, nor have the people of Tenerife had to stop going to the gym. Nor has the restriction of the number of people who can stay in groups been so important, for which the Government of the Canary Islands has opened its hand and has allowed four instead of two. The attempt to impose the Covid-19 certificate of vaccination, test or contagion of the coronavirus in cultural and leisure interiors has not had a fruitful end either, as the Canarian justice determined that it could be a measure that could cause inequality given that some groups they had not yet been able to access vaccination, such as those under 39 years of age.

For this reason, despite the wide vaccination coverage, the lack of restrictions together with the entry into the scene of the contagious Delta variant, has led to the results, although positive, have not shown an improvement as clear as that of that time in Lanzarote. After almost a month in level 3 without obtaining any type of improvement, Tenerife passed to level 4 in the Governing Council of July 21 – the measures were effective as of Monday 26 -. If when it entered level 3 Tenerife had a cumulative incidence of 99.8 cases per 100,000 inhabitants and only 18 cases in the ICU (of the 174 hospitalized), when it was proposed to enter level 4, the incidence had practically tripled (277 , 6 cases per 100,000 inhabitants) while the number of patients hospitalized in the ICU had doubled. At that time there were already 42 people in critical admission, of the 293 hospitalized. Forty-three later and after several fluctuations in the figures that have meant reaching hospital pressure limits comparable to those of confinement and rates of infections never seen before, Tenerife has reduced its incidence during this level 4 by 78.7%, which is now found in 59.4 cases per 100,000 inhabitants (a figure lower than when it was raised to level 3), assuming that it is, in terms of incidence, at a medium risk level. However, with regard to hospital pressure, even today on the island it is somewhat worse than when it was considered that it should pass to level 4. Specifically, hospitalization of critics is still 4.76% higher than then and while that in plant it has only fallen 1.2%.