Variant omicron is already the dominant one in the Archipelago. The 54.8% of the cases analyzed in the Canary Islands During the week of December 13 to 19 they had their origin in this series of mutations that the virus has suffered, as confirmed by the Ministry of Health. In this way, the Canary Islands is one of the only two autonomous communities – along with Madrid – in which the variant Ómicron has completely displaced Delta. In the rest of the autonomous regions, the dissemination of this variant does not reach 30%.
The expansion of Ómicron is also the one behind the explosion of infections in the Islands. Yesterday, the Canary Islands notified 1,863 new cases, which is one of the lowest figures in the last week. Tenerife is the island that has experienced the greatest decline in the new positives, adding 794 new ones yesterday. The situation is not the same in Gran Canaria, that yesterday registered 780 new cases. This data is the third highest of the week and supposes doubling the positives that this island registered last week.
In this way, the contagion curve of Tenerife grows 64% this week compared to the previous one, which represents a slowdown in its expansion speed, given that during the days before Christmas it grew at a rate of 300% weekly.
Although these two islands are the most affected by the sixth wave, the spread of the virus is taking place in all the Islands in unison. During this week, coronavirus cases have increased sixfold by La Gomera, doubled on La Palma and quadrupled on El Hierro. Regarding the eastern province, Fuerteventura, which is at level 3, has increased its cases by 25%, while Lanzarote almost tripled them.
However, thanks to vaccines, mortality from coronavirus has been reduced by 84% in the Archipelago. The inoculation of this protection has changed the scenario in such a way that in this December just 0.19% of the people who have been infected have died, while in the same month last year, the number of deaths amounted to 1% of the infected.
Despite this reduction in mortality, this month of December already accumulates more victims than in 2020. After notifying two new deaths – an 89-year-old man in Gran Canaria and a 39-year-old man in Tenerife, both with previous pathologies -, the The number of deaths associated with covid during these 27 days of December amounted to 73, one more than in the entire month of December 2020. This shows that the more number of cases the greater number of people will be at risk of dying. It should be remembered that during December of last year, 6,005 cases of coronavirus were reported, while so far, this month, 37,712 have been reported, six times more than then.
With the departure of the Christmas bridge, an increase in hospital admissions has also been reported. Specifically, Health yesterday recorded 48 hospital admissions, of which 38 occurred in the ward and another 10 in the ICU. Of these, 26 occurred in Tenerife and only one of them in the UCI, while 19 entered Gran Canaria, with 9 of them in the UCI. In total, there are 393 people hospitalized in the Archipelago, which is the highest number since September 6.
