ARCHIVED - Spain passes the 1 million coronavirus cases mark on October 21st

Spain has now diagnosed 1,005,295 cases of Covid-19 since the pandemic began

As anticipated, on Wednesday 21st October Spain officially passed the one million coronavirus cases mark, increasing the number of cases recorded by the Ministry of Health by 16,973 to reach 1,005,295.
The complicated reporting system used by the Ministry reported that 6,114 cases had been diagnosed by PCR test within the last 24 hours, but to this figure are added the cases previously reported by the 17 autonomous regions of Spain which have been verified and added into the system, bringing the total up past the millon mark.

On the same day the Ministry reported 156 further fatalities, taking this total up to 34,366.

Spain now becomes only the sixth nation to reach the one million mark and the first in Europe, the others being; United States with 8.1 million infections and 218,641 deaths, India with 7.6 million infected people (115,914 deaths), Brazil with 1.4 million infected and 154,176 deaths, Russia with 1.4 million and 24,635 deaths, and Argentina, 1,002,662 infected and 26,716 deaths which, according to the WHO, only passed the million mark on Tuesday.

It’s incredible to think that just 265 days ago the first case of coronavirus was reported in the Canary Islands when a German tourist on holiday in the island of La Gomera tested positive, and that since that day a million people have recorded positive PCR tests in Spain.

When the first major wave had reached its lowest point and Spain emerged from the state of emergency which had resulted in one of the harshest lockdowns in Europe, there was already talk of the possibility of a second wave in the autumn, but few wanted to hear it, desperate to get out and about once again and resume something approaching a normal life, the “new normal”.

The Spanish Government had wanted to keep the confinement in place for longer, but the economic pressure from the business community, in particular the hostelry and tourism sectors, to re-open and try to salvage something of the summer season were too powerful a force to resist and international travel resumed as the regional governments regained the powers to control the pandemic at a local level as they had insisted on doing towards the end of the confinement.

Although the scientific community continued to warn against complacency and efforts were made to keep travellers and holidaymakers safe during the summer holiday period, the virus continued to circulate and by the time we reached august numbers had once again started increasing to such an extent that Spain found itself on the blocked destination list of many nations attempting to control a sudden surge of new cases in their own countries.

By the second week of August the summer holiday season was effectively over, the season saved only by the domestic market, but during those crucial summer weeks the contagions continued to multiply, so that as the holiday season ended, the number of cases suddenly soared and a second wave of the virus began to gather pace.

We are now in a situation whereby the number of cases are starting to rise to a critical level, with community transmission all over Spain and suddenly the prospect of confinements is becoming a reality for millions of people.

In the last three days, two regions have voluntarily closed their perimeter borders and entered a region-wide confinement (Navarra on Monday and La Rioja today) and tomorrow the regional governments will meet to discuss the possibility of imposing a nationwide nocturnal curfew in an attempt to stem the spread of cases through social contact.

On Friday morning Madrid will detail the measures proposed to replace the state of emergency which concludes this weekend, which will include a curfew and other cities are openly talking about imposing further restrictive measures as cases keep rising.

At the moment the health system is holding up; improvements in knowledge, availability of drugs and PPE, more equipment, better preparation, better co-ordination are all contributing to the health system keeping its head above water, but the numbers of hospitalisations are increasing rapidly; today the percentage of beds occupied by covid patients across Spain has increased to 11.5% and the number of intensive care beds occupied by covid patients to 21.5%.

In some areas the pressure in intensive care is already greater; Madrid (39,25%), Castilla y León (35,36%) La Rioja (35%),Navarra (29,2%), Aragón (28,5%) and Cataluña (27,3%) are all under pressure and this will only increase as the weather turns colder, driving the virus indoors.

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