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  • Data: This is how the Government made the hoax that Spain was the second country with the most tests

Six weeks and one day since the decree of the state of alarm has taken the Government to publish details about the PCR tests - the most reliable in detecting the coronavirus - made in Spain . As of April 23, 1,035,522 PCR and other 310,038 antibody tests (rapid tests) had been carried out, according to the Minister of Health, Salvador Illa, yesterday on Twitter and expanded his ministry in a press release.

The diffusion for the first time during the health crisis of the tests at the regional level confirms another fact: the previous two total figures of the Executive are not supported . On the other hand, the message of Pedro Sánchez and other members of the PSOE, yesterday, comparing Spain with the rest of the OECD countries, also has small print: the data used for our country would follow a different criterion than that of the rest of the territories, which would distort the Spanish rate and the international comparison.

Beyond some estimates ("more than 30,000", "more than 600,000" or "more than a million") announced in parliamentary appearances, Health had only given two numbers of PCR tests so far: 355,000 , as of March 25, and 930,230 , as of April 13, both well above the data provided by the autonomous communities, which are those that inform the ministry to prepare the national statistics.

The first realistic figure on the number of PCR tests comes a day after EL MUNDO denounced the sending, by Health, of false data to the Financial Times and then echoed them to affirm that Spain was the second country with the most tests held until March 25. The data of the Autonomous Communities collected by this newspaper (in the absence of Madrid, which did not report them) reflected that the official figure of the Government was overestimated by at least 200,000 tests, and that the levels of PCR announced at that date were not they would have reached until the first of April.

The numbers collected by EL MUNDO on April 14 (679,526 PCR) also did not coincide with the 930,230, on April 13, transmitted by Salvador Illa to the members of the Congress Health Commission, in the session on April 16. In that appearance, the minister also announced that the capacity to carry out PCR tests went from 15,000-20,000 per day to oscillate between 40,000-47,000 per day, which shows that Illa lied if her words were compared with the statistics released yesterday by her ministry. .

If the previous April data were true, Spain would have carried out just over 100,000 tests in ten days, an average of 10,000 a day, well below the official range. On the other hand, for the numbers to be consistent with those of April 13, the official figure as of April 23 should have reached between 1.3 and 1.4 million PCR, compared to just over one million known yesterday, if the analysis rhythm announced ten days ago was met.

The data do match that of the Autonomous Communities

Another test that casts doubt on the 930,230 PCRs released by Illa as of April 13 is found in the data reported by the autonomous communities for those dates, around 680,000 , according to the numbers collected by EL MUNDO on April 13-14. That amount would be consistent with the official average of 40,000-47,000 daily and the cfra of 1,035,522 on April 23 that the government revealed yesterday.

Just as the Government echoed the test rate in Spain by number of inhabitants when it was published by the Financial Times , both Pedro Sánchez and Illa took advantage of the appearance, yesterday, of an OECD report to launch another enthusiastic message about the level of tests made in Spain.

In the morning, the Secretary General of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the Mexican Ángel Gurría , distributed a graphic on social networks together with a message highlighting the presence of Spain among the 10 OECD countries with more test for every 1,000 inhabitants. The publication would surely have gone unnoticed had it not been picked up by Pedro Sánchez's Twitter account, as well as other government officials.

The OECD chart is part of a report, updated this Monday, on the role of covid-19 diagnostic tests and their importance in the coronavirus containment strategy until the development of a vaccine. However, both Sánchez and llla have ignored that it is not the first time that the international organization publishes that document. In the version known days ago, Spain did not appear as a consequence of the lack of official statistics . Another detail to take into account is that the data from the OECD report mixes PCR tests and those for the presence of antibodies for the case of Spain. From Health, they point out to this newspaper that the Government gave the body the disaggregated figure and blames the OECD for the decision to give the joint data of tests carried out.

The source of the OECD is the Our World in Data project , in which, among others, the University of Oxford participates. But there is an exception, Spain, in which case the international body cites the Cabinet of the Presidency of the Government as its origin . The problem is that for the rest of the territories only the PCR tests would be counted, while, in the case of Spain, the antibody tests are also included, as explained on the Our World in Data website. If the latter are discounted, the national rate would go from 28.6 tests per 1,000 inhabitants to 22.2, somewhat lower than the average for OECD countries, always according to their report.

Several of the researchers participating in the project from which the OECD has extracted data have already expressed the methodological problems in the graph included in the OECD report: the total aggregates are not consistent and therefore not suitable for comparisons. in the terms in which the body does them. However, from the Government they decided to highlight the position of Spain and send it as a message, as the headline chosen for the press release in which the data was released by the CCAA on April 23 shows: «The OECD places Spain in the eighth place among the countries with the most COVID-19 tests performed ».

The obsession with international comparative

Since the beginning of the health crisis, the analysis of official figures has cast more doubts than certainties. The problems to consolidate statistics of 17 health systems and the opacity of the Ministry make it difficult to know the evolution of the figures.

At the same time that the national media were deprived of data or the numbers of daily tests that Spain would be doing were constantly being repeated, Health did provide the total amount of PCR when they asked from outside the country. This was the case with the 355,000 announced to the Financial Times, and with the OECD, whose figures were known yesterday. In both cases the reaction was the same: to replicate a triumphant message because of Spain's place in both comparisons.

We have asked the Minister of Health why data on the number of daily #PCR tests carried out by the CCAA have never been published, which @Sanidad has collected since 03/15, and why since Friday this specific information has been stopped, changing criteria . Unanswered: pic.twitter.com/3P6mK1ZYaL

? Civio (@civio) April 19, 2020

The question is whether the data between countries is robust and comparable enough to make comparisons between them. But in Spain, it has been necessary to wait for international classifications to be published for the government to report two of the three figures of total PCR tests announced to date.

Installed in confusion

At the beginning of last week, the number of tests exceeded a million and a half, to 100,000 per day in the last week, according to the director of the Center for Emergency and Health Alerts, Fernando Simón. In the following days, Pedro Sánchez and Salvador Illa reduced them to "more than a million" and a rate of 40,000-47,000 PCR daily.

Fernando Simón explains how the trend in the percentage of positives for # COVID19 continues to fall while the number of tests carried out increases.

With more than 700,000 PCRs last week, the percentage of positives is 3.1%, compared to 26.1% at the end of March, with 200,000 PCRs. pic.twitter.com/v8qbisfpQ9

? Public Health (@SaludPublicaEs) April 20, 2020

The Government confirmed the latest numbers and ignored those of Simón, which they attributed to an error in "the graph" used in his intervention, for "not being well adjusted", as they explained from Health to EL MUNDO.

Lessons from the pandemic:

The more tests are done, the larger the number of infected.

And here in Spain:
We have done 1 million tests in 1 month.
We do 40,000 PCRs a day.

We are the country in the world that does the most tests.

@sanchezcastejon

# AhoraTocaLucharJuntospic.twitter.com / gAd4VJl1e8

? PSOE (@PSOE) April 22, 2020

The confusion of official data has already provoked some reactions in the opposition. The PP has announced the presentation in Congress of a battery of parliamentary questions in which it reproaches the president "for his insistence and that of his government in saying that Spain is one of the countries in the world that performs the most diagnostic tests for coronavirus in its population, when you know it's not true. "

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