The third wave of coronavirus once again places Spain at a level of extreme risk, with an incidence above 250 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in almost all communities.
The positivity is the worst since May: 17% of the tests that are made are positive.
Daily hospital admissions have doubled and are growing in all the autonomous communities.
This third wave also began to rise before Christmas in many places.
The graph shows the weekly average of cases, admissions and deaths, according to data from the Ministry of Health.
Our map
Evolution of the main indicators of the pandemic since September and during
Christmas
In just three weeks, infections have gone above 20,000 a day and have exceeded the autumn records.
This rebound is also confirmed in hospitals, which are already seeing the same admissions as in the worst moment of November.
Although it is never easy to establish the exact beginning of each wave, this week the CCAES spokesman, Fernando Simón, pointed to the relaxation of citizens during the Christmas holidays as a cause of the increase in infections.
However, the data on hospital admissions, which are the most agile indicator available —because hospitals send them directly to the Ministry of Health— suggest that the third wave started to rise earlier.
It can be seen in the graph below.
In the Canary Islands, the Balearic Islands, Madrid, Extremadura, the Valencian Community and Catalonia, the curve of hospitalized patients rose upwards about ten days before the Christmas celebrations.
At that time, experts from the Computational Biology and Complex Systems team of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia already warned that the increase in trips on December holidays had increased infections.
In fact, there were communities that changed their plans for Christmas and tightened restrictions: Valencia only allowed entry to its regular residents and Castilla y León only to family members, closing it for those close to them.
In La Rioja, Cantabria, Castilla La Mancha, Murcia, Aragon, Cantabria and Andalusia, in addition to Ceuta and Melilla, the rebound in income occurred between December 20 and 31.
That means that the infections that caused it occurred at least a week before.
The Río Hortega Hospital in Valladolid is a reflection of this trend.
Already before Christmas the new covid patients stopped falling, to rise to three or four per day.
Now they are receiving about 80 patients a day —in a 600-bed hospital—, explains César Aldecoa, head of the center's Anesthesia and Resuscitation service.
“The difference with the second wave is that then, when the curve began to rise, there were practically no covid patients in the hospital.
The patients of this new wave will arrive with the ICUs already at 45% of their capacity, expanded after the pandemic ”, he adds.
The occupancy of covid patients in hospitals is critical almost everywhere: except Asturias, Canarias, Galicia and Navarra, occupancy is now at a high risk level, both in conventional beds (above 10%), and in ICUs ( above 15%).
A more homogeneous wave
The second wave did not reach all of Spain at the same time.
It began to be noticed in September in the Basque Country, the Balearic Islands or Madrid, which were the first signs of an expansion that would quickly reach all of Spain.
They would fall again only at the beginning of November, after the restrictions after the state of alarm declared on October 25.
Now infections are rising again in a similar way in almost the entire country, as shown in the graph of cases per 100,000 inhabitants.
In several communities the infections already exceed the peak of autumn.
Balearic Islands, Valencian Community or Extremadura double it.
In Madrid, they have been going up since the beginning of December.
Revenues rebounded before Christmas and that ICUs are now at 90% of their normal capacity —or 30% if we also include facilities that normally do not have that use, but have been enabled—: “We are now beginning to see the revenue generated on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.
The impact of Reyes and the snowfall has yet to be seen, ”explains Juan Carlos Arribas, a doctor at the La Paz hospital.
From the graph it is also striking that the rebound in cases is not observed before the rebound in income.
The usual thing is that the numbers of infections rise first and, a week or two later, when the patients get worse, hospital admissions increase.
But this lag is not observed in the Health data.
The number of cases comes from its information system, which the communities feed, and which seems to lag behind the hospital admissions, which are reported daily and directly by the hospitals.
Not only in Spain
In addition to Spain, other European countries are seeing a new wave of cases rise.
Two of the hardest hit countries are the United Kingdom and Ireland, which have tightened restrictions due to the appearance of a new, more contagious strain.
There the incidence exceeds 1,200 cases in 14 days and per 100,000 inhabitants.
Infections are also growing fast in the Czech Republic or Portugal, although not so far in France, Italy and Germany.