Another month just came to a close under the current worldwide COVID-19 pandemic and November continued to show overall improvement throughout the month after two months of mostly opening up across the country including the further addition of more international flights.
The country averaged 50.1 deaths per day which, while still a lot, is another month in the precipitous drop each month since August.
MONTH | DEATHS PER DAY |
November | 50.1 |
October | 64.3 |
September | 115.6 |
August | 190.9 |
July | 188.4 |
June | 175.6 |
The most important statistic is always the positivity rate of testing. As long as testing remains relatively high — which it has — this number acts as the best indicator of how many people are actually infected with COVID-19.
Two months after the country opened up in all regions, this number has dropped drastically and continued to show a steady decrease except for the past four days which has seen a 0.5% rise — still an insignificant increase.
(And no, there is zero evidence that this has to do with “herd immunity”. I’m sure the pseudo-scientists will quickly jump on this to show off their PhD degrees earned at the University of YouTube and Social Media.)
Peru’s health care system was severely exposed and tested at the start of the pandemic, but the two most important factors that have been accepted and adopted by virtually the entire population for nearly nine months now has been mask wearing and social distancing.
While certainly not the only factors, the effect of these two population behaviors has had a profound impact impact on the nation as compared to countries where these were not widely adopted (i.e., the United States).
Hospitalization have continued to decrease as well as shown in this chart showing the number of people hospitalized and in ICU care for COVID-19 at the end of each month.
MONTH | HOSPITALIZED | UNDER ICU CARE |
November | 4,022 | 958 |
October | 5,270 | 1,041 |
September | 7,511 | 1,353 |
August | 12,162 | 1,493 |
July | 13,700 | 1,416 |
June | 11,108 | 1,212 |
May | 8,868 | 975 |
April | 5,287 | 658 |
March | 198 | 56 |
While much of the world has seen wave after wave, Peru has consistently seen improvements month after month.