PILAR PÉREZ / ÁNGEL DÍAZ / ALICIA CRUZ
Madrid
GRAPHICS: ELSA MARTÍN AND ÁLVARO UNDABARRENA
Wednesday, October 21, 2020 - 18:50
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Live.
Coronavirus in Spain
Rapid de-escalation.
Keys why Spain suffers the worst second wave in Europe
Spain has just become the first country in the European Union to exceed one million confirmed cases of coronavirus.
The real number of people infected since the start of the pandemic could be, according to experts,
between 10% and 15% of the population
, that is, above 4.5 million.
The news was unimaginable just a few months ago, when we set out to quickly identify and contain any outbreaks.
However, it is not promising from the point of view of herd immunity, which remains unattainable.
The vast majority of Spaniards have not passed the infection and
we depend on strict compliance with preventive measures
so that the already dramatic situation does not worsen.
The Ministry of Health has registered this Wednesday in its daily report 16,973 confirmed cases since yesterday, thus reaching a total of 1,005,295 since this crisis began in our country.
Still far from breaking, the unstoppable force of this second wave has set a record for positives in one day.
It is the highest figure of the last Wednesday of October.
A week ago, the Government notified 11,970 new infected people, 1,479 more than the previous Wednesday.
Specifically, on the 7th of this month, 10,491 infections were counted.
The main problem, despite the striking figure, is not having exceeded one million, but the rapid increase in cases suffered in recent weeks.
All the autonomous communities, except the Canary Islands, already exceed 100 cases of accumulated incidence
in the last 14 days.
Figures that, after having exceeded a thousand in some cases, we almost take for granted, but specialists see in them the reflection of a "critical" situation.
"The worst thing is that, at the present time, we are increasing significantly", warns Joan Caylà, spokesperson for the Spanish Epidemiology Society.
Both the levels of transmission and the percentage of positives in the tests are indicators that remain very high in Spain, warns this expert, which leaves a mark on the health system.
"
Primary physicians are very overwhelmed and, at the hospital level, ICUs are at the limit
".
"We are at a really critical moment and
we should all do our best to follow the recommendations to the letter
", insists Caylà.
"The prevention and control of Covid should be prioritized, because, if this is not done well, it will also affect the economy, and there will be added problems," he argues.
The next few weeks will also be especially delicate, as the influenza vaccination campaign begins, which will fall on an already overloaded system and will pose
a new threat to the most vulnerable population
.
To which is added that we have already been putting aside other ailments due to the pandemic for too many months: "With the Covid
many chronic patients have been parked
. Their visits have been postponed and they are accumulating. These people also have to be visited by his primary school doctor ", recalls Caylà.
The latest large prevalence study, published in early June, concluded that
only 5.2% of the Spanish population would be immunized
against the coronavirus.
That is, about two and a half million people.
Although the percentage has had to rise significantly since then, in no case would it be enough to achieve group immunity that protects us from Covid-19.
"In the best of cases, we would reach 10%, maybe 15%," Caylà predicts.
"Even if we got to 15%, which is unlikely, it would tell us that
there are 85% who have not
."
To achieve group immunity, "we should reach, it has been calculated, 60%", this expert warns.
"There's still a lot".
What awaits us then?
"What we see quite predictable is that there will be successive waves, in principle, each time a little smaller, because there are more immunized and better treatments, until there is an effective vaccine that has a very high coverage. And, when this occurs, then yes we could have a good control ", Caylà details.
"But we will not have this this year, for sure. And next year, we will see."
"
The best vaccine is prevention
, at the individual level. And, at the level of health policy, we must improve contact tracing."
On June 1, the last day that the aforementioned prevalence study includes, the Health report that the total number of diagnoses - the same that today has exceeded one million - was 239,638.
In other words, the confirmed cases did not reach 10% of the real ones at the end of what we now call the first wave.
At that time, we were still confident that there would be no other, but the situation has gradually
gotten out of control, and faster and faster
.
In fact, it would still take another month, from that date, to overcome the barrier of 250,000 cases, which happened on July 2.
According to the report of that day,
28,368
people
had died
from Covid-19 in Spain.
In the previous seven days, there had been
24
deaths.
On September 7, the cases had already doubled, reaching over half a million.
There were
29,516
deaths
that day
in total and, in the previous seven days,
237
.
We only had to wait until September 29 for the next milestone: that day there were over 750,000 cases, while
31,614 deaths
were counted
.
In the previous seven days,
443
.
Today the trend has been confirmed again: it costs less and less to reach the next round figure and deaths continue to rise.
"Now it
is necessary to take restrictive measures again, but beware, you cannot cool everything down to go back to what was before
. We cannot become a roller coaster", explains Ildefonso Hernández, former director of Public Health and spokesman for the Spanish Society of Public Health and Health Administration (Sespas).
"Although now cases are mitigated and transmissions
are
cut, we
must continue working to strengthen epidemiology systems
. More investment in material and human resources in the detection and traceability of cases arising from outbreaks, once we have reduced the cases , because it will be achieved ", advances Dr. Hernández.
The immediate challenge, then, is to get down the curve as quickly as possible.
But the next challenge, this expert insists, will be not to fall into the same mistake again.
"When the numbers are low is when you have to take action: more tracking, more control in quarantines ... You
have to be creative and put solutions
when we return to this phase of control."
The sad milestone of a million cases therefore serves to reflect on what has been done wrong and, at the same time, advance the necessary changes so that it does not happen again.
"Now we will lower the numbers of infections again, but at a cost: seriously ill, deaths, sequelae in the survivors ...
It is necessary to set a plan well in parallel for when stability is restored
and to be able to stay on that plateau", Hernández proposes.
"Countries like Germany and Sweden have done it."
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