Date Published: 19/01/2021
ARCHIVED - Record weekend with 84,000 new cases in Spain reported
ARCHIVED ARTICLE
Incidence rates over 1,000 in 3 regions as hospital resources are stretched to the limit
The latest coronavirus update issued by Spain’s Ministry of Health on Monday reports that over the weekend a record high figure of 84,287 cases of Covid were confirmed across the country, with the 14-day accumulated incidence rate also rising to an unprecedented peak of 689 cases per 100,000 inhabitants – an extremely sharp increase since the 575 reported on Friday.
There is some optimism that the peak of the third wave of contagion is being reached (although the positivity of the spokesman for the Ministry of Health in his presentation was derided in other quarters), with infections contracted over the Christmas and New Year holidays now developing into symptomatic cases and the post-festive season tightening of restrictions on movement and socializing thought to be likely to take effect over the next week or so. In the meantime, though, the total of cases confirmed since Covid-19 was first detected in Spain almost a year ago has now climbed to 2,336,451, and government Minister Carolina Darias maintains that around 80 per cent of the new cases being reported at present concern infection transmitted among family members.
As things stand the Canary Islands is the only one of Spain’s 17 regions where the incidence rate remains below the threshold of 250 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, above which the situation is described as being of “extreme risk”. The virus is at its most rampant in Extremadura (1,383), Murcia (1,082) and Castilla-La Mancha (1,007), and in both La Rioja and Castilla y León the figure is only just short of reaching four figures.
Regional health services are operating with their resources stretched to the absolute maximum, contingency plans are being implemented and extra hospital beds are having to be brought into service as outpatient units are effectively closed down to free up staff. 18.61 per cent of all hospital beds are currently occupied by Covid patients and in intensive care units the equivalent proportion is almost a third: in total there are now 23,184 coronavirus patients receiving hospital treatment, 3,287 of them in intensive care.
In this context many regional governments continue to introduce stricter measures as they attempt to curb the spread of the pandemic, but the central government is still resisting pressure to allow the confinement of citizens to their homes, although it appears that there may be more willingness to permit an earlier start to the night-time curfew.