The Christmas Eve festivities did not prevent hundreds of cars from staying overnight from the early morning hours to get tested for covid-19 at Hiram Bethorne Stadium in Hato Ri.

From Before 5 a.m. there were already hundreds of vehicles lined up outside the stadium and around 8:30 a.m. it started moving a bit. The examinations conducted by the Department of Health begin at 9:00 am.

Next, the line started at the main entrance to the stadium, on one side of the Plaza Las Américas shopping center. It extended past the police headquarters and headed towards Avenida Andalusia in Puerto Nuevo.

Salud will offer free antigenic or molecular tests as part of the “Tests Parrandón de” initiative. Today they hope to influence eight cities through tests. These are San Juan, Santa Isabel, Orocoves, Naguapo, Mayaguez, Luisa, Las Piedras, and Cabo Rojo.

According to preliminary data from Health, Today’s positivity rate appeared at 21.09% with a difference of 2% compared to yesterday. The Minister of Health, Carlos Melado, called on the public to be vigilant with the testing tool and denied that the island was facing shortages as it has on other occasions during the pandemic.

in your ad, Salud says the tests will be available “until their last date”. The trend in the test lines was similar on Thursday, leaving many people without being able to do the same.

An infection rebound began to emerge last week after the arrival of the omicron variant. In just over ten days, Puerto Rico initially recorded a total of 27,143 cases of coronavirus, mainly from people 41 years of age or younger, who have not been vaccinated against the virus or who need a booster dose.

“To give you an idea, from September 1 to November 30 of this year, there were a total of 16,189 cases, that is, we are talking about that in ten days – from December 12 to 22 – we have accumulated at least a little more than 27,000. 75% of the cases we have seen in the past 10 days have been in people aged 41 or younger. The average age of infection is now 33,” explained the lead health epidemiologist, Melissa Marzan, yesterday.

On the other hand, Marzan confirmed the fourth case of the island omicron variant, a minor case between 0 and 5 years, from Ponce Health District. Although he said he could not say exactly the age, he admitted that the case was attributable to community transmission, as neither the minor nor her family had a travel history.

Likewise, Marzan noted that in the past three days, 92% of samples processed in sentinel laboratories — which support genetic monitoring in Puerto Rico — already indicated “probable omicron”.