The Government of Bolivia reported this Monday that the country officially entered into a sixth wave of the pandemicafter an increase in covid-19 cases was registered for four consecutive weeks, which in the last seven days rose by 203 percent.
The Bolivian Minister of Health, Jeyson Auza, presented the latest weekly epidemiological report in which he detailed that 1,609 more cases of covid-19 were reported in the last week.
"With this fourth consecutive week of increased cases, only today can we announce the start of the sixth epidemiological wave"Auza said.
The Minister of Health attributed the increase in cases to the detection of the Omicron’s new BQ subvariant.
Auza pointed out that in recent weeks circulation was detected in the country "from BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, which are not yet a dominant variant"nevertheless, "knowing the greater contagion potential of this variant, we do not doubt that it will become dominant in the country".
Bolivia reported 192 new infections and one death in the last day, with which the accumulated number of cases from the disease since the first cases of covid-19 were detected in March 2020 stands at 1,112,501 and deaths at 22,250.
The ministry mentioned that the symptoms of these subvariants are cough, sore throat, fatigue, malaise, diarrhea, stuffy and runny nose, headache, fever, muscle aches, loss of smell or taste, feeling short of breath, and rapid heart rate.
Likewise, Auza stressed that the fatality rate remains at 0.1 percent and askedathe population maintain biosecurity measures, as well as goavaccination against covid-19.
Regarding immunization, the ministry reported that to date 15,260,060 vaccines have been applied between single doses, first, second, third and booster, out of a total of 23,815,500 components that the Government has acquired since January 2021.
The report establishes that 813,441 first doses were applied, 584,060 second doses to children from 5 to 11 years old, while 803,449 to adolescents from 12 to 17 years old in first doses and 634,910 in the second.
Minister Auza also referred to the 259 cases of monkey smallpox, of which 246 have recovered. The first contagion was registered in the country on August 1 of this year.
Regarding new cases of whooping cough, 29 were detected in the last week and the accumulated since mid-October stands at 79 infections.
