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State of alarm announced in Spain for coronavirus
(CNN) - At a nationally televised press conference on Saturday, CNN asked Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez about the existence of a Johns Hopkins University classification of covid-19 tests that he had previously presumed. .
During a press conference on April 28, Sánchez said that in a listing of the university it showed that Spain was the fifth in the world in evaluation rates of covid-19. But those international classifications do not seem to exist.
In April, CNN followed up with Johns Hopkins University to verify the rankings, but a spokesperson said, "We were unable to immediately locate such a report."
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When CNN asked if Johns Hopkins was tracking test data outside of the United States, the spokesperson said, "We have put together test tracking exercises in the United States, including state comparisons, at this time."
On its coronavirus website, the institution maps covid-19 infections and deaths worldwide and appears to be tracking only test rates in the U.S. In April, CNN asked the Spanish Ministry of Health to send a link or proof that such a classification existed. They did not respond.
CNN informed Sánchez during Saturday's press conference that Johns Hopkins was unable to locate such classifications and that the Health Ministry had not responded.
When asked if his office could point to the listings he had referred to, Sanchez only said that "the numbers are there." He then went on to read the latest government test data.
When CNN first asked Sánchez about test rates on April 28, the Prime Minister cited data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that showed that Spain was the eighth country in the world in Regarding test fees.
But even before Sánchez answered the question, the OECD had issued a statement correcting his data, after acknowledging that he had mistakenly included Spain's antibody test rates in the overall numbers, skewing his position.
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The updated OECD table at the time showed that Spain ranked 17th in the test rate, not eighth, for covid-19.
The Spanish Prime Minister and his cabinet have been accused by opposition parties and criticized by some of the country's main media for manipulating Spain's evidence classification figures.
On Saturday, Sánchez indicated that as of May 7, Spain had completed 1,625,211 PCR tests and 842,550 antibody tests.
"We are one of the countries that performs the most tests," he said.
coronavirus Pedro Sanchez