Date Published: 02/06/2021
ARCHIVED - Almost 20 per cent of the Spanish population are fully vaccinated against Covid
ARCHIVED ARTICLE
The official pandemic death toll nears 80,000 but all key indicators are improving
The delicate balancing act between increasing the rate of coronavirus vaccination and relaxing restrictions on travel and socialization in Spain appears to be resulting in a slow but steady decrease in incidence rates and other major indicators of the pandemic, and the latest Ministry of Health update published on Tuesday evening shows another slight fall in the rate of infection across the country.
The national 14-day accumulated incidence rate has now fallen to 120.33 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, and the list of regions with figures of under 100 has lengthened to nine with Catalunya dropping below that threshold. The lowest figures are still in the Comunidad Valenciana (35.5) and the Balearics (38.1) while at the other end of the scale are the Basque Country (200) and Andalucía (176): these last two are among six regions still in “high risk” territory, the others being Madrid, Aragón, the north African enclave of Melilla and La Rioja.
Of course, people are still falling ill with Covid even as the situation improves, and the Tuesday bulletin reports a further 4,388 cases and 30 fatalities, but these figures are significantly lower than those of a couple of months ago. At the same time, the number of Covid patients receiving hospital treatment continues to fall, now accounting for only 3.75 per cent of occupied hospital beds, while the equivalent figure in intensive care units stands at 13.33 per cent although it is still above 25 per cent in the regions of Madrid (27.6%) and La Rioja (26.4%).
The latest fatalities take the official Ministry death toll since the start of the pandemic up to 79,983, but the mortality of the virus is decreasing markedly now that the vast majority of the elderly in Spain have received at least one vaccine dose.
VACCINATION UPDATE
A further 292,096 doses of Covid vaccine were administered to the population of Spain on Monday, taking the total up to over 27.1 million.
People to have received at least one dose: 18,178,604 (38.3 per cent of the population)
People fully vaccinated: 9,405,245 (19.8 per cent)
Among the population aged over 60, the proportion of people to have received at least one dose has risen to 95.1 per cent, while well over half (60.5 per cent) have completed the immunization process.
There are still noticeable variations among the speeds of vaccination in Spain’s 17 regions: for example, in Asturias the proportion of over-16s to have received at least one dose has risen to 54.8 per cent, while in the Balearics, the Canaries and the Region of Murcia the equivalent figure stands at between 39 and 41 per cent.
In terms of those who have received the full immunization treatment, the percentages range from 16.5 per cent in the Balearics to 31.5 per cent in Castilla y León.