Date Published: 22/01/2021
ARCHIVED - Second successive daily pandemic record in Spain with 44,000 new cases
ARCHIVED ARTICLE
Hospitals under extreme stress as admissions continue to reach record levels
The daily coronavirus updates published by Spain’s Ministry of Health continue to provide bleak news and on Thursday the figure of 44,357 confirmed new cases marked the second successive record high in a single 24-hour period.
This takes the running total of known infections in Spain up to 2,456,675 and at the same time the official death toll has reached 55,041, another 404 fatalities having been added on Thursday.
Arguably the most worrying aspect of the data, though, is the fact that the 7-day and 14-day accumulated incidence rates continue to rise sharply, with the 14-day figure now up to an unprecedented 795 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, far higher than in the first and second waves of the pandemic (although it has to be remembered that when the crisis started far fewer tests were carried out).
Thursday’s data included new record case numbers in various regions including Galicia, Andalucía and the Basque Country, but the 14-day rate remains highest in Extremadura (1,467), Murcia (1,287), the Comunidad Valenciana (1,166), Castilla y León (1,142), Castilla-La Mancha (1,141) and La Rioja (1,135). Only in the Canary Islands (185) is the incidence rate still below the threshold of 250 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, above which the situation is described as being of “extreme risk”.
One of the consequences of these astronomical infection rates is that the pressure on regional health services and hospitals throughout the country is being raised still further, and with 3,734 Covid patients currently in intensive care units the pandemic now accounts for 36.3 per cent of all occupied ICU beds.
The proportion is even higher in many regions, reaching 60 per cent in La Rioja, 57.5 per cent in the Comunidad Valenciana and only slightly under half in Catalunya, Castilla-La Mancha and Madrid.
A total of 26,542 people are receiving hospital treatment for coronavirus, occupying almost 21 per cent of the available beds, and in practically all parts of the country hospitals are being forced to close outpatient units and suspend non-urgent surgery in order to care for Covid sufferers.
However, in presenting the latest figures, Fernando Simón, the Director of the Coordination Centre for Health Alerts and Emergencies, did his best to find grounds for guarded optimism. His analysis of the data is that the steep upward curve in infection is at least beginning to flatten out, with the increases reported gradually becoming less significant in percentage terms as the effect of increased socializing over the festive season begins to fade. Only a shade over half of the cases confirmed during the last fortnight have been in the last 7 days, he points out, and from an epidemiological point of view this would appear to suggest that a levelling off and subsequent fall in case numbers could occur soon.
Unfortunately, though, even if this does happen it will not be reflected immediately in the data regarding hospital and intensive care admissions, and it is therefore inevitable that the pressure on health services will become even more extreme before it begins to ease.