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Covid-19: Spain and Portugal, the new area of ​​concern in Europe

2021-01-21T15:13:33.604Z


Both countries face a sharp increase in the number of cases, similar to that experienced by Ireland and the UK within weeks


The weeks go by but are not the same on the Covid-19 front in Europe.

After the United Kingdom and Ireland at the end of December and beginning of January, it is now towards Spain and Portugal that all eyes are turning with concern.

These two countries have the highest numbers of new daily cases relative to the population, and the curves have been climbing at high speed since the beginning of January.

A record number of 41,576 cases in 24 hours was announced this Thursday morning in Spain.

35% of intensive care hospital beds are now occupied by Covid patients, more than the peak of the first wave.

In Portugal, the hospital system is already on the verge of rupture.

"Doctors are faced with more patients than they are able to treat and they end up choosing to treat those who seem the worst first," one of them testified in the Publico newspaper on Tuesday.

The epidemiologist Antoine Flahault, director of the Geneva Institute of the Globe, sees "no simple and unique reason" for this situation.

However, here are several avenues put forward by specialists.

Less stringent measures at Christmas

In Portugal, many public health experts criticize the government for loosening restrictions too much during the Christmas holidays.

For example, it was allowed to move around and everyone was free to gather with family or friends.

This could have encouraged a certain "relaxation" in the respect of barrier gestures and precautionary measures.

Estamos no pior momento da COVID-19 em Portugal.

É urgente controlar a pandemia de uma vez por todas e parar com estes sucessivos confinamentos e desconfinamentos.

As pessoas ea economia não aguentam mais.

O governo tem de mudar radically de estrategia.

pic.twitter.com/kLJecefrHQ

- Ricardo B. Leite (@RBaptistaLeite) January 12, 2021

Epidemiologist Ricardo Mexia also believes that the country "pays" for not having sufficiently lowered the contaminations curve in the fall.

Since the end of October, the country has hardly ever fallen below the threshold of 300 daily cases per million inhabitants.

"An increase was inevitable after the holidays and it was not properly planned," said the professor of public health to the Financial Times.

Caught up in the situation, the country has been confined again since Friday, January 15.

A prospect that the neighboring country does not (yet) envisage.

In Spain, since the end of October, only a curfew has been imposed on the whole territory from 11 p.m., or 10 p.m. if a region so decides.

But many local elected officials of different political stripes want to go further, by imposing it from 8 p.m.

Some even plead for a new confinement as strict as last spring.

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The power based in Madrid says it is open to these proposals but it does not intend to derogate from the measures provided for in the context of the current state of health emergency.

This "worked because it gives regions the tools to restrict movement on their territory", replied the Minister of Health Salvador Illa Sunday in the daily El Païs, citing in particular the closure of certain businesses or the ban on gatherings.

Schools still open

If he sees "no big difference" in the measures taken during the end of the year celebrations by Spain and Portugal compared to other countries, Antoine Flahault stresses however that these two countries are among those having decided to keep the schools open.

However, "we still see quite clearly that the top of the list in Europe is rather carried by the countries which have closed the schools", he adds, referring for example to Germany and Austria.

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In Portugal, the Prime Minister has long justified keeping schools open by the fact that this made it possible to limit the social consequences.

But many elected officials lobbied to change his mind.

And he finally announced this Thursday afternoon the closure of schools for two weeks, as had been decided during the first confinement.

A holiday effect?

What is happening now may be reminiscent of the situation observed at the end of the summer, when Spain and the south of France were among the first areas in Western Europe to experience a resurgence of the epidemic.

"This is only a hypothesis, but this parallelism may suggest that Spain and Portugal have once again welcomed more tourists or people returning home during the end-of-year holidays than other countries, with the risk of bringing the virus from different corners of Europe, ”observes Antoine Flahault.

Still, 13 of the 17 Spanish regions had closed their doors to tourists and limited entry to their soil.

The British variant that spreads

In Portugal, 13% of the cases examined in the week of January 11 to 17 are linked to this variant, reports the Jornal de Notícias.

By way of comparison, this rate is - for the moment - barely above 1% in France.

13%, "it is a lot and it is possible that this partly explains the rapid increase in new cases", underlines Antoine Flahault.

Because this variant would be between 50 and 70% more contagious, according to the first scientific studies.

In Spain, the first four cases were identified on December 26.

The queue to be tested, in Madrid, at the end of December. / AFP / Oscar del Pozo  

In these countries as elsewhere, the authorities anticipate that this variant will become the majority within a few weeks or months.

But that would not be inevitable.

In the United Kingdom and Ireland, where more than half of new cases are linked to this strain, containment measures have still made it possible to drop the curve of new cases.

Source: leparis

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