Just seven weeks after its first coronavirus wave came under control, experts say Spain is once again in a “critical” situation with the lowest number of infections in Western Europe.
The country reported an average of 4,923 new daily cases of respiratory disease in the last seven days, a higher amount than that of Britain, France, Germany and Italy combined, according to a summary compiled by AFP based on official figures .
Spain has 95 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people, compared to 24 in France, 17 in Britain, 13 in Germany and just eight in Italy, the first country outside China to be hit hard by the pandemic.
The spike has led to a growing list of countries to set up travel restrictions to Spain, which has nearly 323,000 confirmed cases of the disease, the highest number in Western Europe and 11th highest in the world.
“It’s a critical moment, we are at a point where things can get better or worse,” said Salvador Macip, an expert in health sciences at the Open University of Catalonia, who has written a book entitled “The Great Modern Plagues”.
“This means we need to pull all the stops to limit outbreaks before they become more serious,” he told AFP.
There are currently more than 500 outbreak clusters in Spain, according to the Ministry of Health. The ministry’s emergency coordinator Fernando Simon acknowledged on Monday that there were cases of community transmission in some places that were “not perfectly controlled”, but he said they had been “slowly calming down” in recent days.
– ‘Perfect storm’ –
Spain set up one of Europe’s toughest lockdowns in Europe in mid – March to combat the spread of the virus, with people allowed outside only to buy food, seek medical attention, walk their dog for short walks or work as they please. could not remotely.
When the lockdown measures were completely lifted on June 21, the country reported just 238 new infections and it had just eight cases per 100,000 people.
But infections have increased since the first week of July, in part because the government “rushed” to open up the economy “certainly thinking about tourism”, a pillar of the Spanish economy, said Joan Cayla, the head of ‘ the Tuberculosis Investigation Unit of Barcelona, which is now focusing on COVID-19.
Several outbreak clusters have been reported among seasonal farm workers – who often live in crippling conditions – since the start of the summer season, and it has helped help the rise in cases, Macip added.
And the onset of hot weather has left people “a little” relaxed, in a country where physical contact and meetings with friends and family are common, Macip said.
This helped create a “perfect storm,” Macip said.
He said the best way to reduce infections is with more testing, public education campaigns and more people being recruited to carry out contact tracing – and there have been “flaws” in all three areas.
– Falling baptism rate –
The powerful regional governments of Spain, which are responsible for health care, have taken drastic measures to curb outbreaks, such as closing nightclubs and forcing the use of face masks in public despite the heat.
Several regions have also launched public awareness campaigns with hard-hitting images to encourage young people to respect social distance measures.
The federal government is defending the record, claiming that more cases are being discovered as more tests are conducted – about 7.5 million so far, with 407,700 last week alone.
It indicates that more than half of new infections are among asymptomatic patients who show no symptoms but can still transmit the virus, that hospitals are far from overwhelmed and that the death rate from the virus is significant slow.
Spain recorded 950 daily COVID-19 deaths on April 2 alone when its first coronavirus wave peaked – compared to a total of 253 deaths since security measures ended on June 21, for a total of 28,576 deaths.
du / ds / pmr / dl
