Spain’s covid-19 continues to climb without any signs of slowing down. All parameters used to measure the strength and spread of the virus have increased in the past four days. More than 52,000 new infections have been reported. The incidence of the virus in people over 60 continues to rise, as well as hospital admissions, and ICU bed occupancy. It is not unusual to believe that Spain is facing a worrying eighth wave of infections as it approaches the end of summer vacations.
The Ministry of Health provided data this Tuesday showing that the cumulative incidence among people over 60 years of old has increased by 86 cases in the past week. In 14 days, we have increased from 755 cases per 100,000 people to 841.2 cases. This is 11.5% more than four days ago. Step by step, we are approaching the alarming figure of 1,000 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in 14 days, which is twice the 500 that the community and ministry mark as very high risk. There are seven autonomous communities which have broken the barrier of 1,000 cases. They include Madrid (1.450), La Rioja (1.371) and Canarias (1.131), Extremadura (1.129), Extremadura (1.129), Castilla La Mancha (1.079), Baleares (1.0277) and Galicia (1.020). Only Andalusia (271) remains below the 500-case threshold.
Age groups show that infections are more common in those aged over 80 (1.082 cases), than those between 70 and 79 (917) and 60 to 69 (966).
One piece of information that might give hope is the 7-day national incidence. It is slightly less than half the 14 cases. This suggests that the upward trend could slow down over the next few weeks. We’ll see.
Since Friday, Health has recorded 52,218 new infections. This increase means that the global number of infected people since March 2020 has increased to 12,734,038
These figures are also increasing in hospital occupations. On Tuesday, Spain saw 9,553 patients admitted with covid. Of these, 433 were in the ICU. This is a record since April. The 7.79% covid patients are among all Spanish hospitalized (6.67% on Friday, nearly 17% more), and 4.93% (4.38%, 12.5%) in intensive care. This puts them closer to the 5%, which would allow us to abandon the classification of ‘controlled circulatory’ to make way for low risk.
The department of Carolina Darias also reported 107 deaths Tuesday. This brings the total number killed by the pandemic to 107 906.
