Spain returns after two months to be at medium risk of transmission by coronavirus.
The accumulated incidence in 14 days has dropped this Thursday from 150 cases per 100,000 inhabitants (specifically, 140.43), something that had not happened since last July 1.
The fifth wave thus continues to fall to place the country in a territory with little traffic in the last year: only 70 of the last 365 days have been kept out of the “high risk” or “very high” of contagion, for two short periods at the beginning and the end of spring, framing the fourth wave.
These figures refer only to the risk of transmission.
In order to calculate the global risk, in each territory, in addition to the accumulated incidence, other indicators of transmission and care are taken into account, such as hospital occupancy and intensive care units.
At the national level, the figures are at medium risk in ICUs (less than 14% occupancy of covid patients) and low in the ward (less than 5% occupancy).
The healthcare pressure, moreover, continues to fall.
Since last August 2, there are fewer and fewer admitted for covid in Spanish hospitals.
This Thursday there were 5,115 covid patients in the plant, almost half the peak in the fifth wave.
1,258 patients were admitted to the ICU.
The decrease in this statistic is slower: on August 9, the day of maximum occupancy, there were 2,031 patients in the ICUs.
A progressive decrease in the number of deaths is also being reflected in the daily Health reports.
Although these data take weeks to settle, the trends are already of a clear, albeit slow decline, both in the daily death report and in weekly deaths by date of death.
The downward trend of the pandemic indicators is generalized in all the autonomous communities, but there are still nine at high risk of transmission: Aragón, the Balearic Islands, Cantabria, Castilla-La Mancha, Extremadura, Madrid, Navarra, the Basque Country and La Rioja.
The best data are those of Asturias, with a cumulative incidence of 56. This community is also the one with the largest portion of its population with the full dose of the covid vaccine: 81.1%.
Faced with the fall in infections, most communities are progressively raising social limitations.
Catalonia, for example, will eliminate all restrictions that still affect fundamental rights, such as the number of people in social gatherings, although they will continue to apply, for example, capacity in hospitality.
Will the transmission continue to drop?
The decline in infections will foreseeably continue in the coming days. It is impossible to know with certainty what the epidemic curve will do, but the incidence in the last seven days (xx cases per 100,000 inhabitants) is well below half that of 14 days. Although with limitations, mainly due to the delay in notification of diagnoses, this indicator marks the trend of what will happen with the cumulative incidence at 14 days, the standard reference to follow the epidemic in Spain: if it is below half normal is that the future behavior is downward and if it is above, upward.
Beyond the immediate future, what happens over the next few weeks or months will be determined by the virus's ability to transmit itself in a society that is increasingly vaccinated. Experts also watch closely what happens in schools. Children under 12 years of age are not vaccinated and, although this has not happened in the past, classrooms could become a reservoir this year, a transmission vector that generates new waves.
If there are, they will be, predictably, less and less deep and, above all, less serious. The fifth wave has already shown a fatality seven times lower than the previous ones thanks to vaccines. The fifth wave, in which the explosion of diagnoses was faster than in any of the previous ones (in the first wave, infections probably rose faster, but were not detected), the pressure on hospitals has not compromised at any time the assistance capacity. With more protected populations, it will be normal for the disease caused by the virus to be increasingly mild.
Fernando Simón, director of the Center for the Coordination of Health Alerts and Emergencies (CCAES) has given a conference this Thursday at the annual meeting of the Spanish Epidemiology Society (SEE), in which he declared that, if they occur, the new waves will be more mild: "It is very likely" that Spain will not have major epidemic waves again. There may be the sixth, seventh, eighth or ninth wave, but they will not be like the previous ones ”. Simón has been in favor of “starting to normalize the disease”, although certain measures are maintained and the contagion curve continues to be watched.