The director of the Metropolitan Health Region, Israel Cedeño reported this Saturday that in Tocumen they are initiating a new strategy such as mapping, which seeks to identify all areas with or without COVID-19 cases to carry out the proper epidemiological investigation, which will be replicated.
During a sample collection sweep in the Cántaro 1, Cántaro 2 and Altos de los Ángeles sectors in the district of December 24, explained Dr. Esmeralda Martínez, national coordinator of swabs, in the company of
Cedeño.
"We want to have a new map of how the virus moves, instead of following it, we are going to try to anticipate the virus compared to population behavior, and how it is moving within communities."
With this process, the disease can be detected early, effective care and medication is achieved, said Dr. Martinez.
After this sweep of the Rapid Response Teams (ERR) of the Ministry of Health, Dr. said that the statistics will be collected, the results obtained will be used to plan other sweeps in sectors of the city or the interior of the country.
The doctor.
Cedeño pointed out that “these three sites (Cántaro 1, Cántaro 2 and Altos de los Ángeles) have a peculiarity, since they present very few cases, so we are doing a sampling to verify if there are no cases, or they are asymptomatic or not they are attending the swabs."
Likewise, during this swab-taking sweep, Regional Health Promotion was in charge of providing guidance, teaching, delivering kits containing face screens, alcoholic gel and information on biosafety measures, as well as face screens to the people of each residence visited.
They reiterate to the population not to lower their guard and reinforce all biosecurity measures with frequent hand washing, use of a mask, keep physical distance and the use of the face shield as one more tool of protection against
COVID-19.