Date Published: 22/06/2020
ARCHIVED - 125 new Covid cases in Spain as Aragón re-applies Covid restrictions
ARCHIVED ARTICLE
11 outbreaks are underway in different areas of Spain but the Ministry of Health maintains that all are under control
During the last week the numbers of new Covid cases reported in Spain has been slowly increasing and on Monday the Health Ministry reported 125 new cases on Monday, a slight fall when compared to the figures published on Sunday lunchtime.
Last Monday 40 new cases were reported, which almost doubled on Tuesday to 76, then rose to 141 on Wednesday, on Thursday there were 143 new cases and 154 on Friday. On Saturday the numbers fell back slightly to 134, before rising to 141 on Sunday.
The daily bulletins reflect the epidemiological situation of the previous day, and there is often a delay in the notifications on Monday relating to the weekend, so these figures often rise more steeply on Tuesdays.
The region which is causing the most concern is Aragón, where a major outbreak in the southern half of the province of Huesca linked to a fruit and vegetable farm has forced the Aragonese regional government to reapply restrictions from phase 2 of the de-escalation in the affected areas, effectively taking three of the comarcas, which are an administrative district within a province of the region, back down to phase 2.
For two consecutive days Aragón has reported 33 new cases.
Catalonia has also reported 24 new cases in the last 24 hours, after reporting 23 new cases yesterday and Navarra (21). Yesterday Navarra had only 3 new cases, but there have been two outbreaks linked to the "family and social environment", the regional government said in a press release. The cases are related to two outbreaks, one around a meal held in the Pamplona region and the other in the Navarra Norte Health area, according to the Navarran Health department.
Madrid reported 17 new cases, Andalucía 3, the Balearic Islands 1, Castilla la Mancha 4, Castilla y León 3, the Valencia Region 3, Extremadura 4, Murcia 4, the Basque Country 5 and the enclave of Melilla on the African coast, also reported 3. 12 of the 17 autonomous regions reported new cases today, as opposed to 14 yesterday.
Fernando Simón, director of the Ccaes stressed that the Huesca outbreak has "some relevance" and "is an area where you have to be very careful now, " explaining that the movement of seasonal workers working in the agricultural sector meant that this area "has a lot of exchange and a lot of contact."
A similar situation occurred recently in the Murcia municipality, in which agricultural workers returning from France brought the virus with them, causing a local outbreak.
All outbreaks are being controlled by the Ccaes, which initiates contact tracing and attempts to impose lockdown quarantines en bloc of those working in a particular work gang, as well as identifying and quarantining all their possible contacts.
Controlling the movements of agricultural workers is difficult as they frequently travel in minibuses or coaches to different farms where their services are required on a daily basis, moving between different agricultural exploitations within a geographical area. In this case the workers frequently cross from one province to another to work on different farms.
The fatalities count only increased by one person on Monday, rising to 28,324 and in the last seven days 21 people have died with confirmed coronavirus infections across Spain.