MADRID – After enjoying a long night of graduation celebrations, a crowd of young people went to the Babylon nightclub at 5 in the morning to continue the party in the city of Córdoba, in southern Spain.
Two weeks later, 91 people linked to Babylon’s 400 identified partygoers have tested positive for the coronavirus, and regional authorities are still struggling to track down everyone who entered the club that night, or who later contacted they.
Spain lifted a nationwide state of emergency on June 21 as it emerged from a strict three-month blockade imposed to gain control of one of Europe’s worst outbreaks. The rapid spread of the virus in Spain left some 28,400 people dead according to the official count, almost certainly underestimated, with most of them over the age of 70.
Since then, new coronavirus cases have quadrupled, now concentrated among youth, as Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s left-wing coalition government returned responsibility for a safe reopening to Spain’s regions. That has turned Spain into a mosaic of new rules, some less strict or stricter than others, and an uneven mosaic of successes mixed with alarming failures.
The country is now dealing with 224 local outbreaks, Spain’s health minister Salvador Illa told Parliament on Wednesday.
Several other European countries, from Portugal to Germany, have faced major local outbreaks after exiting the blockade, but most of them were on a more limited scale and died out relatively quickly. Authorities isolated outbreaks of new cases and tracked down those that may have been exposed.
The resurgence in Spain has underlined not only the need for vigilance as societies re-open, but also supportive measures such as additional testing and contact tracing, steps that Spain remains poorly equipped to carry out.
The result is that hundreds of thousands of people in various parts of the country have been forced to return to temporary closures, especially in the northeast region of Catalonia, an area especially previously affected.
But public tolerance for the new blockades may be less than in March and April, when quarantines across the country were largely obeyed, but only reluctantly.
Young people in particular are bothered by the restrictions, especially as they are less likely to become seriously ill as a result of an infection. Although the demographic change towards young people has reduced the risk that the Spanish health sector will once again become saturated with patients with Covid-19, as happened in late March, it has generated new concern about asymptomatic transmissions, which makes it necessary to analyze everything the more pressing
However, health experts warn that Spain continues to fail in terms of testing for Covid-19.
“Spain should design a specific strategy to identify asymptomatic patients”, Helena Legido-Quigley, associate professor of public health at the University of Singapore. In general, she added, “the ability to test and follow up on contacts could be greatly improved” in Spain.
Spain’s health minister Illa recently warned that his socialist-led coalition government was ready to revive Spain’s state of emergency if it was clear that the regions could not control the latest outbreaks.
But Mr. Illa leads a fragile minority government that has faced strong criticism from opposition parties for the government’s response to the pandemic.
This week, María Jesús Montero, the minister who is the government’s spokesperson, sent a special message of caution to “younger people, because some of the outbreaks are related to behavior in nightlife venues or places where a lot of people”. . “
In the case of Catalonia, which has had one of the worst resurgences of the virus, the situation has been complicated by disagreement between politicians and local judges about who has the authority to put people back under lock and key.
Last week, the Catalan regional leader, Quim Torra, urged, instead of ordering, about three million people living in Barcelona to stay home and “demonstrate that we are a society of solidarity.”
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Frequent questions
Updated July 23, 2020
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What will school be like in September?
- Many schools are unlikely to return to normal hours this fall, requiring the routine of online learning, impromptu child care, and delayed work days to continue. California’s two largest public school districts, Los Angeles and San Diego, said July 13 that instruction will be remote only in the fall, citing concerns that rising coronavirus infections in their areas pose too serious a risk to students and teachers. Together, the two districts enroll about 825,000 students. They are the largest in the country so far to abandon plans for a partial physical return to classrooms when they reopen in August. For other districts, the solution will not be an all-or-nothing approach. Many systems, including the country’s largest New York City, are devising hybrid plans that involve spending a few days in classrooms and other days online. There is no national policy on this yet, so check with your municipal school system regularly to see what’s going on in your community.
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Is the coronavirus in the air?
- Coronavirus can remain in the air for hours in tiny droplets in stagnant air, infecting people as they inhale, growing scientific evidence suggests. This risk is highest in crowded interior spaces with poor ventilation, and may help explain overcast events reported in meat packing plants, churches, and restaurants. It is unclear how often the virus is transmitted through these small droplets or sprays, compared to the larger droplets that are expelled when a sick person coughs or sneezes, or is transmitted through contact with contaminated surfaces, Linsey said. Marr, Virginia Tech aerosol expert. Aerosols are released even when a symptom-free person exhales, speaks or sings, according to Dr. Marr and more than 200 other experts, who have summarized the evidence in an open letter to the World Organization. Of the health.
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What are the symptoms of coronavirus?
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What is the best material for a mask?
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Does Covid-19 transmit asymptomatic?
- So far, the evidence seems to show that it does. A widely cited article published in April suggests that people are most infectious approximately two days before the onset of coronavirus symptoms, and estimated that 44 percent of new infections were the result of transmission from people who still had no symptoms. Recently, a senior expert at the World Health Organization stated that transmission of the coronavirus by people without symptoms was “very rare,” but later withdrew that claim.
However, many people ignored Mr. Torra’s recommendation, and the local police were even forced to close some of Barcelona’s crowded beaches over the weekend due to the risk of infection.
Although the most serious outbreaks have recently occurred in the northeast of Spain, only two of the 17 regions of Spain, Madrid and the Canary Islands, have not re-imposed the requirements to wear face masks at all times outdoors.
Law enforcement has turned out to be complicated, not only at outdoor gatherings but also in places like nightclubs that have been allowed to reopen under occupancy limits.
In Córdoba, there are conflicting accounts of what happened at the Babylon club, which was restricted to 40 percent of its 500-person capacity to allow for social distancing. Regional authorities say they have identified some 400 people who went to the club that night, although their administration has insisted that there were no more than 140 inside at any time. The club is now closed while an investigation continues.
Some regions of Spain report a particularly strong increase in the number of cases among adolescents. In the northern region of Aragon, where authorities said this week they could contain the outbreaks without re-blocking, the infection rate increased seven times in a month among people tested for ages 10-19.
Some recent outbreaks have been linked to vulnerable sectors of society, particularly seasonal fruit pickers in northeast Spain, who are often migrant workers.
In recent days, Spanish hoteliers and travel operators have reported more booking cancellations since the new outbreaks and blockades were announced. The latest outbreaks could threaten cross-border travel in Europe, at a time when some tourist destinations are already suffering because airlines have only reopened some of their routes.
Last week, Jean Castex, the new French prime minister, said his government was monitoring the situation in neighboring Catalonia to decide whether the French-Spanish border should be kept open.
On Wednesday, Reyes Maroto, the Spanish tourism minister, urged France not to close the border. “We are living with the virus, but this does not mean that we cannot travel and regain some kind of normalcy,” Maroto said at a conference in Madrid.
