"Catalonia has been having problems with data validation for two days." In this way, Fernando Simón, the director of the Alerts and Emergencies Center of the Ministry of Health, explained at a press conference the new dance in the death toll of the official accounts. Since last Monday, the reported amounts and the subtraction of the totals do not coincide and there have been differences of 14, 15 and one death in recent days. However, the official record corresponding to Friday has revealed 688 more deaths compared to yesterday , of which Health only recognizes 56. Of those 688 deaths that we did not know about until today, 635 have been reported by Catalonia. Despite this, the Ministry led by Salvador Illa has announced the phase change, including Barcelona, ​​which is moving on to phase 1.

"With the data from yesterday afternoon, we could assume that it was a specific problem. Today we have been very concerned. We have a very important interaction with Catalonia to try to avoid this becoming a problem once we go to the new phases ", has assured Fernando Simón. "Until recently, Catalonia was reporting well and the evolution had been very good, and the problem we had yesterday and today has surprised us ."

However, the Health spokesperson during this crisis has not gone into detail about this increase in the number of deaths. "Both the Catalan Public Health authorities and the Ministry of Health are going to have to be very aware of what is happening because it is not trivial that we cannot know what is really happening right now in Catalonia ."

Sources of the Ministry of Health have been replying to this newspaper for days that the dance of figures responds to the readjustment of the Autonomous Communities, which are reviewing the data. Regarding this outcrop of 688 deceased, 635 of them in Catalonia alone, Health has once again explained to El Mundo that "with the new data collection system, the Autonomous Communities have been adjusting and reporting old cases."

New local outbreaks

Simón himself has acknowledged at a press conference his concern about the data reported by Catalonia. "We know that this is associated with a specific area, which is not in all of Catalonia, but we are concerned, because if it is happening in one specific area it could happen in others," he assured, and warned that it is possible that this will generate a problem whose solution is not in the tables of the experts in epidemiology, but in the offices of the highest political level. "If this problem is not solved in the next few days, I understand that at the highest level they will have to have the discussions and negotiations that are necessary to guarantee security, not only for all Catalans, but for all Spaniards."

In this way, Simón recognizes the problem posed by these data, which could have concealed a possible regrowth in Catalonia these past few days, in a scenario of a phase change in Catalonia with data that the department of Salvador Illa himself claims to be unaware of.

" Some very small small outbreaks with a very small number of cases have been detected in some areas of Spain ." Simon has pointed out during his daily appearance. Specifically, he stressed that these were outbreaks "of a few case units", none of them greater than a dozen, and that this has led to "taking very surgical actions around these outbreaks" and that "they have not had any real impact "on the pandemic situation.

"Furthermore, it has been possible to assess that a large part of those cases that were associated with these outbreaks had had previous symptom onset dates and that, therefore, the outbreak itself was probably smaller than it initially seemed." , has added. Despite these facts, Simón has pointed out that "everything is moving forward" and that "there is no going back", although he has called for caution before entering into the analysis of the pandemic data.

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