ARCHIVED - Spanish Health Minister warns that hard weeks lie ahead as Spain passes 2 million covid cases

"We have to vaccinate, vaccinate and vaccinate. "

The Spanish Minister of Health, Salvador Illa, has warned this Friday that "hard weeks lie ahead" and that the way to “bend the curve of the pandemic again” is to reduce movements "to the maximum" and reduce social contacts.

The Minister insists yet again that a national confinment is not the answer and the imposition of measures should remain in the hands of the 17 autonomous regional governments, who he feels are best placed to respond to the situation in their respective regions.

"Cases are going to continue to grow, we are going to have some tough weeks ahead of us and it is very important to reduce mobility and contacts as much as possible and strictly apply the restrictions of the health authorities of the autonomous communities," said llla in a Press conference with the Minister of Territorial Policy, Carolina Darias, at the end of the pandemic monitoring committee, which was also attended by the president, Pedro Sánchez.

El ministro de @sanidadgob afirma que las CC.AA. están llevando a cabo acciones proporcionadas ante la situación epidemiológica de sus territorios.

Salvador Illa recuerda que es fundamental que la población siga cumpliendo con todas las medidas de las autoridades sanitarias. pic.twitter.com/ulb9HnSZk5

— La Moncloa (@desdelamoncloa) January 8, 2021

"Yesterday's data is bad data, the pandemic is evolving for the worse in our country", he said, referring to the 42,360 new positives and 245 deaths that the Ministry of Health reported on Thursday, taking the total of cases diagnosed in Spain past the 2 million mark.

Spain thus becomes only the eighth country in the world to reach this figure, joining the United States, India, Brazil, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Turkey and Italy in the “2 million cases club”.
The sudden rise in new cases since the end of the seasonal festivities has pushed Spain to a national accumulated incidence rate that exceeds 350 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, thus exceeding the threshold of the situation of "high risk ", with some regions of Spain averaging more than 400 or 500 cases.

On Friday the AI rate over 14 days reached 350.48 per 100,000, with Extremadura (799,00), Baleares (546,52) and Madrid (507,64) all exceeding the 500 mark.

On Thursday several regions announced tighter restrictions to try and slow down the rate of new infections. Castilla y León closed its perimeter border until May, the Region of Murcia confined 22 municipalities, including the regional capital, following the example of Catalonia, the Valencian Community, Extremadura and La Rioja which have all introduced harsher restrictions this week.

The first million confirmed cases of Covid was reached on October 21st, in the middle of the ascending phase of the second wave. Two and a half months later, again with the epidemic skyrocketing, the second million has been exceeded, although it is estimated that the actual number of infected is more than double those reported officially as many asymptomatic cases will be circulating without their carriers realising they are even contagious.

The conclusions of the fourth wave of the seroprevalence study taken at the end of last month estimated that 9.9% of the population had antibodies, around, 4.7 million people.

The sudden surge in new cases is nationwide, but the regions reporting the most cases on Thursday were Catalunya (12,500), Madrid (8,684), Andalusia (5,124) and the Valencian Region (3,793).
However, although the case numbers are of concern, the biggest worry is the percentage of PCR tests yielding a positive result, as this gives a clearer picture of the degree to which the virus is circulating amongst the general population. Before Christmas the average rate was around 7%, but is now averaging around 13.4% - and in up to three autonomies exceeding 20% - showing a higher level of generalised circulation.

The Minister also announced that the European Commission had purchased an additional 300 million more Pfizer vaccinations, and that the first doses of the Moderna vaccine would arrive in Spain within 7-10 days.