Date Published: 09/04/2021
ARCHIVED - New daily Covid vaccination record in Spain but fourth wave appears to be gathering momentum: Covid April 8
ARCHIVED ARTICLE
The 14-day infection rate rose by almost 4 per cent on Thursday alone as another 142 deaths were reported
Forecasts made a month ago that the long-awaited acceleration in Spain’s Covid vaccination campaign could coincide with a fourth wave of infection following the Easter holidays are beginning to look very accurate, according to the latest updates published by the Ministry of Health on Thursday evening, with the situation further complicated by the restrictions imposed on the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine during this week.
The figures show that the key indicator used in Spain to measure the risk of infection, the 14-day accumulated incidence rate, jumped between Wednesday and Thursday from 168 to 174.5 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, with increases reported in all of the 17 regions apart from the Canary Islands (-1 per cent) and Catalunya (-4 per cent). The most significant rises are those of 11.2 per cent in Castilla-La Mancha, 10.5 per cent in Andalucía (10,5%) and 9.5 per cent in the Comunidad Valenciana, and the fact that the upward trend is almost universal seems to indicate that further rises can be expected.
As a result of the latest data, which include 9,901 newly confirmed cases, the highest incidence rates in the country are those reported in the north African enclaves of Melilla (483) and Ceuta (433), Navarra (379.5), Madrid (315.5) and the Basque Country (289.1), all of them above the extreme risk threshold of 250. At the other end of the scale only the Comunidad Valenciana (34.6) remains at low risk, followed by the Balearics (64), Murcia and Galicia (both 67).
At the same time, the strain placed on hospitals as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic continues to increase again after falling shortly before Easter. The most recent bulletin reports a very slight decrease in the proportion of hospital beds occupied by Covid patients to 7.5 per cent (as opposed to only 5.3 per cent in mid-March), but in intensive care units the equivalent figure, which climbed back above 20 per cent for the first time since 18th March on Wednesday, has reached 20.26 per cent, and in La Rioja, Melilla, Madrid and Catalunya is well over a third.
Meanwhile, the addition of a further 142 Covid-related fatalities brings the official Ministry death toll over the last 15 months to 76,179, although it is generally agreed that the “real” total is substantially higher due to many fatalities going undetected during the first wave of infection in patients who had not been tested for SARS-Cov-2.
Now that there can be no doubting the recent upward trend in infection rates, the question is whether sufficient people have been vaccinated to ensure that the fourth wave is less dramatic than the third. The latest daily vaccination update reports another 24-hour record in Spain with the administration of another 450,000 doses, and as a result 14.3 per cent of the population – or 1 in 7 – have received at least one dose, among them 3 million people, or 6.2 per cent of the population, who have received both.