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ARCHIVED - Covid infection rate down by a third in Spain this week but health authorities urge caution
345 fatalities reported on Thursday as the official death toll approaches 69,000
Delays in the vaccination campaign leave Spain vulnerable to a potential fourth wave of Covid
Exactly a month after the peak of the third wave of coronavirus infection in Spain was reached, with a 14-day incidence rate of 899 confirmed cases per 100,000 inhabitants on 26th January, the figure published in the latest daily update from the Ministry of Health on Thursday afternoon has dropped to 206, with other indicators also reflecting the easing of the pressure on health services in all parts of the country.
The rate has fallen by around a third over the last seven days (having stood at 321 a week ago) and among the 17 regions of Spain the “extreme risk” threshold of 250 cases per 100,000 inhabitants is currently exceeded only in Madrid (322) and the Basque Country (264), although the north African enclaves of Ceuta (297) and Melilla (431) also fall into this category.
At the other end of the scale the rate has dipped below 100 in Extremadura (78) and the Balearics (97) and is close to doing so in the Canaries, La Rioja and the Region of Murcia, and with under 10,000 new positive diagnoses having been made for the third day in a row there are grounds to expect that the figures will continue to fall next week.
The proportion of hospital beds occupied by Covid patients also continues to fall, although rather more gradually, and now stands at 10.16 per cent (as opposed to 13.5 per cent a week ago), while over the last seven days the equivalent figure in intensive care units has dropped from 35.4 per cent to 29.6 per cent.
But the third wave of contagion is still resulting in many fatalities, and after another 345 were reported in Thursday’s update the official Ministry death toll over the last year has now reached 68,813.
At the same time, warnings of a possible fourth wave are growing louder as regional governments begin to relax the restrictions on socializing and mobility which are generally accepted to have been successful in combating the third wave, with very few of the population having been vaccinated so far and more infectious strains of coronavirus, such as the “Kent variant”, becoming more prevalent in this country. In Catalunya the regional government has already slowed down its proposed de-escalation of anti-pandemic measures and a minimal increase in infection rates was reported on Thursday, and Fernando Simón, the Director of the Coordination Centre for Health Alerts and Emergencies, has repeatedly stated that although the situation has improved dramatically over the last month in no way can it be considered “good”.
While the number of hospital beds occupied by patients has fallen considerably, he points out, it is still higher than at the peak of the second wave of Covid last autumn and another increase in case numbers would create yet more severe problems for health services.
Vaccination
Meanwhile, mainly as a result of problems in the supply line, the number of people to have received vaccines against coronavirus in Spain continues to rise slowly. The latest Ministry update reports that a total of 3,436,158 doses have been administered, with 1.23 million people having received both recommended doses and just under 1 million more having received just the first.
The number of people to have received at least one dose is therefore 2.2 million, equating to just 4.65 per cent of the country’s population.