Note to readers: EL PAÍS openly offers essential information on the coronavirus during the crisis. If you want to support our journalism, subscribe here .
The curve of new coronavirus cases, which has maintained a very marked upward trend in Spain for at least two weeks, added 7,117 new positives to 2,415 in the last 24 hours this Tuesday, according to the data provided this afternoon by the Ministry of Health. It is a growth in line with that registered in previous days that supposes a new increase in the incidence rates most used to compare the situation of the pandemic in the different countries.
- The Government offers its support to the communities if they ask for the state of alarm to contain the coronavirus
The number of diagnoses per 100,000 inhabitants in the last 14 days has already risen to 173, while there are 86 in the last week. According to an estimate made by The New York Times, based on data from Johns Hopkins University, Spain has already surpassed the United States (whose incidence has been declining for almost a month) in the daily number of new positives per million inhabitants, according to the data of the last week. The North American country has seven times the population of Spain.
Madrid is once again the community that contributes the most cases to national growth, with 1,927 new diagnoses. Proportionally, however, its weight has decreased somewhat - it used to contribute one in three cases and this Tuesday they are slightly more than one in four - due to the growth of other communities in which the spread of the virus seems to have gained strength.
The most striking case is that of the Balearic Islands, which with a population of just 1.2 million inhabitants, adds 909 new positives in one day. The archipelago has been registering a very important growth in incidence for a week, a trend that is also followed by other regions such as the Valencian Community (770 new cases for 4.97 million inhabitants), Murcia (159 positive and almost 1.5 million) and , to a lesser extent, Andalusia (526 cases with 8.4 million).
According to the data published by Health, the situation improves on the other hand in other communities that, unlike the previous ones, started from much more complex epidemiological situations. The most obvious case is Aragón, which with 161 new positives registered the smallest increase in more than a month; Catalonia, which with 785 diagnoses has dropped from one thousand for the first time in a week; and the Basque Country, whose 250 new cases are about half of those declared in recent days.
52 new deaths
The daily Health count records for the second day a stagnation or slight decrease in new cases with onset of symptoms in the last seven and 14 days. This data, in principle positive when collecting the most recent cases, must still consolidate the trend in the coming days to verify that it is a real change and not an effect of the delay in notifications.
This last problem is the one that has been manifesting itself in recent weeks in the number of deaths, which this Tuesday has added 52 to the total, which already amounts to 28,924 deaths since March. In the last week 116 new deaths have been registered.
The total number of patients hospitalized for the virus, a new detailed data by communities that Health has been offering since last Thursday using the health centers themselves as a source, now amounts to 5,688 throughout Spain, of which 677 are in the ICU, after registering 903 admissions and 699 discharges in the previous 24 hours.
The trend also in this case continues to be upward, since the number of hospitalized patients has grown by 204 in one day, almost 4% more. Those admitted to the ICU have grown to 21 patients (3.2%). The percentage of beds in Spanish hospitals occupied by patients infected with covid-19 has increased to 5.3%, two tenths more than this Monday.
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
- Search engine: The new normal by municipalities
- Questions and answers about the coronavirus
- Guide to action against the disease