A worker in the ICU of the Madrid hospital in La Paz, on September 15 SERGIO PEREZ / Reuters
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The coronavirus figures in Spain are increasingly reminiscent of the crudest moments of the crisis.
Although the cases detected daily are not comparable due to detection capacity (this Tuesday there were 10,799 new positives), the number of deaths can be compared: in the last 24 hours the Ministry of Health has added 241 new deaths to its reports , the highest figure of the second wave.
In the first one, he counted 950 in one day.
Hospital occupancy is also gradually growing: 9.6% of beds are occupied by coronavirus patients.
But the situation is worse in ICUs.
This Tuesday, for the first time, the Ministry of Health has published the percentage of occupation of covid patients in critical units.
It already accounts for 16.8% of the total, with great variability between communities: in La Rioja it exceeds 56.7%, followed by Madrid (36.3%) and Aragón (32.5%).
At the other extreme are Galicia (4.48%), Asturias (4.53%), Extremadura (8.79%) and Canarias (9.15%).
All the others exceed 10%, taking into account that the measurement is not with respect to the base capacity that the hospitals had, but to the extensions they have made in their services, which in the cases of greater saturation are made at the expense of sacrificing routine procedures.
These data are key because they determine, ultimately, the severity of mobility measures to stop the virus.
When ICUs become saturated, authorities are left with no choice but to resort to drastic limitations to alleviate them.
This is what happened in the spring, when the economy was completely frozen to avoid the collapse of these units.
What happens in ICUs is a reflection, a couple of weeks apart, of progress in diagnoses.
Despite the fact that many more positives are detected than in March –many are asymptomatic and a good number are mild–, as the cases detected grow, the number of people requiring hospitalization or intensive care also increases.
The epidemic continues to advance in almost all communities.
The incidence in Madrid, the worst hit, is 746.2 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the last 14 days.
The average in Spain is 287.7.
The following communities are: Navarra (622.7), where it is growing strongly;
La Rioja (444.5);
Aragon (388.1), where it has risen again in recent days after a sustained drop for weeks, and Castilla-La Mancha (383.6), where the epidemic has also rampaged.
The only one that continues below 100 cases per 100,000 inhabitants is Asturias (98.26), followed by Galicia (114.4) and Comunidad Valenciana, 115.
Despite being the communities with the best data in Spain, they are very far from most European countries: Germany (24.9), Italy (32.1), United Kingdom (69.1) or Portugal (80.8 ).
In all of them the trend is upward, especially in France, which already reaches 182.9 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.
Information about the coronavirus
- Here you can follow the last hour on the evolution of the pandemic
- This is how the coronavirus curve evolves in Spain and in each autonomy
- Download the tracking application for Spain
- Search engine: The new normal by municipalities
- Guide to action against the disease
