The Delta variant, predominant in the Valencian Community until last December, has been displaced by a strong surge of Ómicron. This is reflected in the update of the epidemiological situation published on Monday, in which it is revealed that the percentage of infections by the variant has now risen to 61.4% compared to just 36.7% at the end of December.
This has also become the main variant at the state level, in which it has gone from 37.7% of the samples to 61.6%. In some autonomies it has accounted for up to 90.9% of those affected by the virus.
As the report states, it is a variant that has led to an increase in transmissibility, although with less severity, and as such, for many weeks, the data in the Valencian Community has been breaking daily records.
Also on Monday, the Ministry of Health reported a total of 29,347 new cases of coronavirus in the Community, a new record number. These dramatic increases have also led to an increase in hospitalisations, which in the last month have increased from 563 to 1,374, although still far from the highest peaks of care pressure of the pandemic.
The rise is also reflected in the ICU, with admissions increasing from 93 to 201. Deaths also continue to rise. On Monday 22 deaths were reported, of which 12 women, between 37 and 93 years old, and 10 men, between 50 and 83 years old.
Meanwhile, schoolchildren returned to their classrooms on Monday with a “change in dynamics” in some of the anticovid measures, due to the differences of the omicron variant with the previous variants, and the sights set on the new phase of childhood vaccination.
One of these changes is that the Valencian Community will follow the criteria adopted by the Public Health Commission of not quarantining the entire classroom when there are up to four infected positives or less than 20 percent of the students.
Quarantine is now only recommended for the entire class when there are five or more cases of active infection in a classroom, or 20% or more of the students in the class are affected, in a period equal to or less than seven days.
The ‘president’ of the Generalitat, Ximo Puig , said, “We must change the rules of the game because the action of the pandemic has changed.”
