Date Published: 29/05/2020
ARCHIVED - Spanish Health Ministry Covid figures impossible to verify
ARCHIVED ARTICLE Adjustments to the reporting system have still not been completed and the figures are obviously inaccurate
This week there has been considerable confusión and consternation over changes in the reporting system used by the Ministry of Health to gather data from the 17 regional health authorities.
The “adjustments” in the system have resulted in the figures showing less deaths than a week ago, and the imbalance between data which has been updated and amended is now so disparate that it is impossible to gain an accurate picture of what is actually happening in Spain at the moment or report figures which are genuine and correct.
Fernando Simón, Director of the Coordination Center for Health Alerts and Emergencies has said that it is likely to be another week until the adjustments have been completed.
The Ministry is attempting to correct the historical data provided by the regional health services, whilst also producing more accurate data reflecting the current trends of the situation.
This means that the figures being presented are nonsensical, for example on Thursday the national fatalities had only increased by one person according to the data presented, to 27,119, yet the figure which indicates the number of new deaths within the last 7 days was recorded as being 38, one less than the previous day.
One figure which is being updated is the number of new cases reported which is registered as 182 for Thursday, 49 less than on Wednesday.
However, the figure showing the total number of cases has increased disproportionately by 1137 cases to 237.906, so the figures are just not stacking up logically.
In addition, the number of accumulated cases is once again showing positive antibody test results, in this case, those "with compatible symptoms" and IgM antibodies, according to a footnote at the bottom of the table.Recently the antibody positives were removed from the reported cases data, so this latest change is creating yet more confusion. Some autonomous communities, such as our own hre in Murcia, continue to report both sets of test figures in their own daily report.
Cases showing recent symptoms are once again climbing
What is showing clearly though, is an increase in the number of those reporting symptoms in the last seven days. According to he Ministry, in the last seven days there have been 3,062 diagnoses of coronavirus, of which 244 started to show symptoms in the last seven days an increase from the 199 on Wednesday and 243 of Monday and Tuesday.
The Health Minister stated in a press conference yesterday that the data show a "very favorable" evolution of the coronavirus epidemic, with a sustained downward trend during the last nine weeks, despite "some" isolated outbreaks in recent days that have been detected early and contacts rapidly isolated. These localised outbreaks were in Lleida, Totana, Cuenca and Ceuta.
Hopefully the Ministry will conclude its “adjustments of the historical data” and provide a more accurate picture soon after the weekend.
Until then it’s very difficult to accredit any veracity at all to these figures.
If you want to see the full pdf of what is being produced
Click here