Last week, several peaks of daily COVID-19 contagion numbers in Peru were exceeded, an average of more than 5,000 new daily cases, which place the Inca country second with the highest number of COVID-19 infections in Latin America after Brazil.
May 25 started with 4,020 new cases; the number increased by 5,772 on Tuesday; there were 6,154 new cases the following day; on Saturday, the digits jumped to 7,386; and there was an increase of 8,805 new positives last Sunday.
In this regard, former Health Minister and epidemiologist at Peru's Cayetano Heredia University, Patricia Garcia, said that this increase is basically due to the fact that now a greater number of tests are being carried out to detect the virus.
This has turned Peru into the country that carries out most testing in the continent, even surpassing Brazil —which has six times the Peruvian population and is also the country with the second-highest number of infections worldwide.
The Head of State recalled that at —the beginning of the pandemic— the capacity of the Peruvian health system was to process 350 tests a day, then it went up to 1,000 daily, and —at present— it seeks to register an average of 30,000 tests per day.
"When we increase the number of tests, the number of positive cases increases," he expressed on the occasion.
More testing, better information
Former Minister Garcia shared this point of view and pointed out that —rather than a cause for alarm— the identification of more cases per day should be seen as a strength of the strategy, because it means that Peru has a deeper vision of the pandemic and better information to face it.
According to the academician, other countries deem as positive COVID-19 cases those involving citizens with symptoms and detected through molecular tests.