Madrid and Catalonia are not by causality two of the territories that lag behind in the progress of the phases. Both communities add 75% of the new diagnoses by coronavirus that the Ministry of Health has published this Wednesday. There are 174 of the 231 positives that the autonomies reported last night. The epidemic has claimed 39 lives in the last seven days; Wednesday’s report records a total of 27,118 deaths, just one more than 24 hours earlier.
Fernando Simón, director of the Center for Coordination of Health Alerts and Emergencies, has described this level of transmission as “very low”, but warned of the risk that the small outbreaks that have been detected in some parts of Spain lead to new outbreaks: ” Going through the phase does not imply that the risk is zero. An outbreak caused by a small innocent party could be the start of another epidemic. If the measures are being opened little by little it is for a reason; If we are not all in the third phase, it is because we have to go slowly. ” Regarding the origin of the new cases, Simón recalled that there may have been transmission between people who did not develop symptoms and that “intra-family chains or workplaces” have been maintained, which with lack of confinement is surely generating the foci that have been seen for example in Lleida and Murcia.
The data published by Health is hardly comparable with that of the previous weeks. Since last Monday, a change in accounting broke the series. Although the new system provides more precision when it comes to knowing how many new diagnoses there are each day, it prevents looking back to see the evolution. The deaths and hospital admissions of each day are not known either, only the one accumulated in the last week.
In the past seven days, 283 people were hospitalized. Although Madrid and Catalonia account for a large part of the income (88 and 54, respectively), the proportion is less than that of the cases. Castilla y León, Castilla-La Mancha, Andalucía and Aragón had more than a dozen. In this same period, 13 people required intensive care throughout Spain.
The new health system was launched on May 11, when the ministry began asking individual governments for individual data. Whereas before each one sent a number of cases, deaths, hospital admissions … from that date they have to complete a record of each person, with all its characteristics, onset of symptoms and diagnosis. Thus, until a few days ago, each day the new positives reported were added, but since Monday the accounting is only of those diagnosed the previous day. Those of the past seven days (14.59 per 100.00 inhabitants in the whole country) and of the last 14 days (6.39 per 100,000) are also published, which allows us to check how the incidence of weekly illness is decreasing In week.
This system is also causing some problems. There is a dance of figures that, according to sources of Health, was predictable and will last a few days. The clearest mess was that when it was started, almost 2,000 deaths disappeared from the accounts. This is due, explains the ministry, to the fact that duplications have been corrected, to the fact that deaths that did not really have a positive diagnosis have been reviewed and, most likely, to failures in the dumping of the new system.
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