Bogotá, August 19, 2022. The Ministry of Health and Social Protection delivered a new report on how the two public health events of note are evolving at this time in the country: COVID-19 and monkeypox.

Claudia Cuéllar, director of epidemiology and demography, pointed out that "we are still in a pandemic situation, and we must pay close attention to everything that is happening at the international level, in terms of Sars-Cov2 behavior, since we have travelers from different countries, and we must conduct permanent surveillance".

The official reaffirmed that, although the fifth peak began its sustained decline in cases in July 22 and in deaths as of August 11, the fatalities continue in higher risk groups, for which she urged vaccination with complete schedules and reinforcements.

Similarly, she reiterated the importance of taking PCR tests in accordance with the established guidelines, which have been updated and are now available for consultation by health service providers.

For her part, Martha Ospina, director of the National Institute of Health (INS), reaffirmed the need for testing, especially in territories such as Leticia, Mitú, Pasto and Tunja, since they present an abnormal positivity for their territories, and this may be due to surveillance failures.

Furthermore, she recalled that antigen tests have low sensitivity if performed outside the required time window, and in the face of new lineages and subvariants, they lose performance capacity.

Ospina explained that genome mutations affect immunity in a certain way and that is why the same person can be reinfected several times, but not necessarily end up in an ICU.

In her intervention, the director of the INS presented the channel to monitor the pandemic, which demonstrates that the country is at its upper limit (gray horizontal bars).

"If we remain within the channel for a minimum of 20 weeks or more, without increased hospitalization or higher excess mortality, we can start talking about endemic behavior at that time," she said.

Monkeypox

Regarding monkeypox, Cuéllar indicated that 792 alerts have been handled with the territorial entities, of which a total of 164 positive cases were registered, distributed in: Bogotá, Antioquia, Tolima, Risaralda, Cali, Cartagena, Cauca, Cundinamarca, La Guajira, Santander Valle del Cauca, Quindío, Norte de Santander, Barranquilla, and Atlántico.

"Right now, the population is concentrated; we can still monitor the chains. That's why we are permanently vigilant to prevent the chains from breaking and losing them and falling into community transmission, which is not currently occurring," said the director of epidemiology.

At the end of the segment, the clinical guideline for monkeypox care was presented, which contains general aspects, transmission mechanisms, medical condition, diagnosis, clinical management, complications, and aspects that must be monitored, vaccination, biosecurity measures for health service provision, recommendations for prevention, prevention of stigma and discrimination, risk communication, financing of laboratory tests, medical disabilities, and annexes.