More infections, more deaths: Spain is threatened by the collapse of the crown

The number of corona infections in Spain is skyrocketing. There are more deaths, clinics sound the alarm. And because of the restrictions, the country’s economy is also crumbling.

These are difficult conditions to imagine in Germany. People are not allowed to leave their neighborhoods, there is a strict requirement for masks, hospitals are running out of beds, and the economy is collapsing by almost 18 percent.

The situation in Spain has significantly worsened in the last month. In no other country in Europe were there more corona infections: Johns Hopkins University currently has more than 680,000 illnesses in nearly 31,000 people who have died of Covid 19 disease (as of September 23 at 1pm). Since the beginning of August, almost 2,500 people infected by the corona virus have died in Spain.

Statistics show the rapid increase in the number of new corona infections every day. (Source: t-online)

But that’s not all: the number of new infections in Spain has skyrocketed since August, and more than 500,000 people are currently infected, which is also a sad record in Europe. For all Spain, the Ministry of Health registered 10,799 new infections in the last 24 hours of this Tuesday. For classification: In Germany there were 1,769.

Anger, helplessness and fear

Given the dramatic situation, there is a mixture of anger, helplessness and fear in the population. In spring, the country had the strictest curfews in Europe, people mostly adhere to distance rules, and there is still a nationwide mask requirement in public spaces. Still, the pandemic returned much earlier than expected.

Madrid: A bar counter is cordoned off in the Usera neighborhood to avoid contact with customers. (Source: dpa)

Politicians are to blame for this too, because conditions were quickly lifted in early summer so as not to further damage the tourism industry as a major economic pillar. The example of Spain shows: Too fast an easing, taking into account the economy, means that more stringent corona measures must be introduced. And the economy suffers even more.

Terrifying situation in Madrid

The situation in Madrid is particularly terrifying. The situation here is not solely due to political failure. A multitude of different factors converge in the Spanish capital.

The regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, warned this Tuesday of the closure of the entire capital region due to the high number of new infections. Residential areas with a total population of 850,000 have been partially cordoned off since Monday. Residents can only drop them off to go to work, school or the doctor. “It makes no sense to impose restrictions in some areas and not others,” Ayuso said, according to Spanish media. She did not rule out that the entire capital region with a total of 6.6 million inhabitants could be affected.

Madrid: Isabel Díaz Ayuso (r), regional president of Madrid, and Pedro Sánchez, prime minister of Spain, talk about how to proceed in the corona crisis and measures to contain the virus in Madrid. (Source: dpa)

That would further aggravate the situation. In fact, according to information on Tuesday, the number of new infections in 16 other urban areas, as well as in areas already partially closed, exceeds 1,000 per 100,000 inhabitants in 14 days. For classification: In Germany, this value is currently 13.5 calculated over seven days. The comparative figure for Madrid would be mathematically 27 to more than 1,000.

Only a few “Corona detectives”

The Uzera district is particularly affected. There lives a comparatively poor part of the population of Madrid, a problem to contain the pandemic. Because people often stay afloat with illegal odd jobs. You have to go to work to have an income. Quarantine rules are not always followed.

But a quarantine is difficult for many people there. Many apartments are very small, families live in a confined space. Isolation is almost impossible. If someone gets corona sick, the authorities often fail.

The so-called “crown detectives” should also reconstruct the infection chains in Spain to contain the virus. But that doesn’t work well in Madrid. “The region has not hired enough people from the beginning, at the beginning there were only a dozen, now we have maybe 200,” Julián Ordónez of the UGT union said on television art. “That would actually take 1,600 to 2,000 people. But now we are at a point where it is too late.” The infection rate and the number of unreported cases are too high.

Hospitals affected by the second wave

The hospitals of the Spanish capital are growling, the second wave has also arrived here. According to the newspaper “El Confidencial”, the university hospital is currently the hospital in which the majority of Covid 19 patients are treated in Spain, 287 patients currently. The general intensive care units and the intensive care unit for heart disease patients are fully occupied with Covid-19 patients.

The medical staff is in a private clinic in the Usera district of Madrid. In the Spanish capital, six districts and seven surrounding municipalities have been partially cordoned off since Monday to contain the corona pandemic. (Source: dpa)

Patients with other diseases have to be transferred to resuscitation rooms, the capacity limit has been reached, more than half of the intensive care beds in the entire Community of Madrid are already occupied. Spanish journalists like Manuel Ángel Méndez write on Twitter about the state of the health system, saying that it is a “definition of collapse.”

“Since the beginning of August we have seen a sharp increase in the number of patients admitted with a corona infection,” Soledad Alonson, a pulmonologist at the Madrid hospital in Torrejón, told the art station. “We were expecting a second wave in the fall, not August.”

Barcelona: Internal doctors with masks participate in a protest on the second day of the strike for better working conditions. While the number of people infected by Covid 19 in the country is increasing again, young doctors demand, among other things, higher incomes. (Source: dpa)

Above all, medical personnel in Spain lack clarity and preparation from the authorities, doctors and nurses also demonstrated a few days ago in Madrid against the government’s crown policy. Reason: too few staff, too low salaries, and generally too low a total budget.

Protest against the government’s crown policy

However, the government’s crown measures are under attack from various sides. Thousands of people demonstrated in Madrid on Sunday against the cordon off of several low-income areas. The measures were unfair and discriminatory, it was said in large concentrations.

People carried signs with inscriptions like “Our neighborhoods are not ghettos”, “More doctors, more followers, without exclusion” or “You have abandoned us and now you lock us up.” They also called for the resignation of regional president Ayuso: “Ayuso, you are the virus.”

Madrid: Thousands of people demonstrated against the government’s crown policy over the weekend. (Source: Reuters)

According to many critics, the measures were correct, but they came too late. Also, more and more people fear for their economic existence. Due to contact restrictions, it is not profitable to open, especially for small shops and the hotel industry. “The economic consequences scare me more than the virus itself,” Rodrigo Avelle told ZDF. “It’s getting worse, especially for small stores and small businesses.”

An example of a warning for Germany

The economic consequences for the entire country have been clearly visible since the beginning of the pandemic in spring. Gross domestic product (GDP) fell from April to June by 17.8 percent compared to the previous quarter, as the statistics office announced on Wednesday: this is a record drop. For classification: The German economy only contracted by 9.7 percent.

Ultimately, the example of Spain shows that it does not depend only on gravity or the number of corona measures. Politicians contributed to the current situation because they reacted too late at first and then relaxed again too quickly. In addition, there is an underfunded health system, a consequence of the 2008 financial crisis. The country was forced to cut costs, also at the behest of the European Union and Germany.

But Spain continues to be a warning example for Germany with its home problems. The coronavirus can benefit from hesitancy and irrationality. And above all: a second wave may arrive earlier than expected.