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On a day like today, a year ago, Health confirmed a case of coronavirus in Palma de Mallorca, a British patient admitted to the Son Espases University Hospital, which was officially the second case of Covid in Spain at that time.

Two days earlier, the 'anonymous hero' of Wuhan, the doctor retaliated against for warning of the coronavirus, died before the Chinese authorities themselves recognized the risk.

Days before, on January 30,

the WHO declared a global emergency, called ESPII

(public health emergency of international importance).

In Spain, the majority still saw it as something far away, a situation that was not going to happen to us (even days later when things got ugly in neighboring Italy), and they debated what to do with the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona ( event that was canceled on February 12 due to the wave of international companies that withdrew).

The first official case in Spain occurred on January 31, a German patient who was admitted to La Gomera (Canary Islands).

Perhaps it did not seem close enough to us due to being the islands, but, after the case of Palma, they began to appear days later on the peninsula as well.

Today we know that

in Spain the first cases could have already occurred in early January

, according to data from the National Epidemiological Surveillance Network (Renave) of the Carlos III Institute.

What came next we all know.

The declaration of a pandemic, a brutal first wave, one of the toughest lockdowns in the world to stop a runaway curve ... and then the

unjustified relaxation of political leaders and citizens

that led to a less peaceful summer than it is. I was already expecting a second wave that began in Spain much earlier than in the rest of Europe.

We had not gotten out of the second wave when we were bogged down in the third, coinciding with - again - the relaxation of the Christmas holidays - which had been 'heated' with the previous bridges.

A third accelerated wave that has led us to reach 3 million infected in Spain this Tuesday

(specifically, 3,005,487), according to data published by Health.

In this sense, it should be noted that the infections in the last 24 hours are 16,402, a figure much lower than the one that had been recorded in previous weeks (similar to those of the end of December).

Diagnosed the previous day are 7,162.

Of them, 2,223 are in Madrid and 1,381 in Catalonia, the rest of the Autonomous Communities being well below 1,000 infections.

We exceeded the first million infected on October 21 (1,005,295), when we had been in a pandemic for more than seven months.

We hit the second million on January 7 (2,024,904), just two and a half months later.

To exceed the third million infections this Tuesday, a month has been enough

, which indicates the speed of infections in this third wave.

In these data, we must also take into account the

progressive increase in diagnostic tests that are carried out in our country

, which allows detecting many more infections among the population.

"Today we detect the reality of the infection. Before we only saw a tenth of it, but now we are sure that at least eight out of 10 cases are detected. In March, we did 500 tests a week for every 100,000 inhabitants, today more than 3,500 ", as Fernando Simón, director of the Center for the Coordination of Health Alerts and Emergencies (CAESS), pointed out last Monday.

In this sense, and to see it better with figures, Health reported on October 19, just before reaching one million infections, that 11.5 million PCR had been carried out since the start of the pandemic, in the last week (from October 9 to 15) a daily average of 121,732 tests (91,732 PCR and the rest of antigens).

This Monday it reported 29.9 million diagnostic tests since the beginning of the pandemic (23,660,765 PCR) and indicated that in the last week, from January 29 to February 4, a daily average of 140,360 PCR and 98,344 were performed antigen test.

A small daily increase, but above all a large increase in the total number of tests:

the number performed in seven months has almost tripled in less than four months

.

Undoubtedly, the figures indicate that fortunately now much more is detected, but it

is

also

undeniable as we said the speed of this third wave

and that is seen not only in the high number of infections detected, but also in the care burden that has broken records since the first wave.

And that is being reflected in the number of deaths that has been quite high for a couple of weeks.

This Tuesday, like other previous ones, a sad record of deaths was broken: 766 in the last 24 hours (last Tuesday there were 724, the previous record since the first wave).

In the last seven days, 1,698 deaths were recorded (336 in the Valencian Community, 264 in Andalusia, and 158 in Castilla-La Mancha, 154 in Galicia or 140 in Castilla y León).

The total number of deaths since the beginning of the pandemic in our country is already 63,061.

The cumulative incidence (AI) continues to decline little by little and stands at 630 this Tuesday, with all the Autonomous Communities below 1,000.

The figures are still not good, especially in the Valencian Community (965.15), Castilla y León (870.96), La Rioja (852.59) and Melilla (811.68).

Still above 500 are 9 communities: Madrid (759.58), Andalusia (731.17), Castilla-La Mancha (720.26), Asturias (580.86), Aragon (578.95), Galicia (569 , 03), Murcia (537.25), Ceuta (530.80) and the Basque Country (506.48).

The care burden is easing very slowly.

The percentage of beds occupied by patients with coronavirus in Spain drops just over one percentage point in 24 hours and stands at 20.41% (a figure that exceeds the maximum risk threshold of 15%).

The percentage of intensive care beds moved less than one point compared to the previous day, standing at 42.28% (also well above the threshold for very high risk, which is more than 25%).

Once again, we emphasize that these figures are only for Covid patients, we must add those who occupy ICU beds for other pathologies or interventions and, therefore, the degree of saturation is even higher, 100% or more in some autonomies.

Thus, in terms of ICU bed occupancy, the most saturated communities are: La Rioja (67.82%, up two percentage points), Valencian Community (58.12%, it remains), Melilla (52.94%), Castilla -La Mancha (52.02%, up less than half a point), Castilla y León (51.40%, remains the same), Madrid (50.60%, down two points), Catalonia (46.30%), Balearic Islands (37.38%, down two points), Aragon (37.13%, down almost two points), Andalusia (37.11%, it remains), Asturias (36.64%), Ceuta (35.29%) , Basque Country (33.63%, down almost two and a half points), Extremadura (32.09%, down almost three points), Murcia (32.04%, down one and a half points) and Galicia (31.16% , down a point and a half).

That is, only the Canary Islands (17.25%), Navarra (20.90%, down more than two points) and Cantabria (23.85%, down less than one point) do not exceed the maximum risk threshold of 25%, which does not mean that they are fine.

Our hospitals are beginning to decrease the numbers of hospitalized patients and ICUs very slowly, following the decline in infections and the accumulated incidence.

But it is not yet reflected in the care burden borne by hospitals since these patients require admission for a long time and therefore the figures are cumulative.

To date, there are 26,101 patients admitted for Covid, a figure slightly lower than in previous days.

Of those more than 26,000, 4,589 correspond to Madrid, 4,352 to Andalusia, 4,261 to Catalonia, 3,572 to the Valencian Community and below Castilla y León (2,113) and Castilla-La Mancha (1,367).

In the last 24 hours, 2,459 patients have been admitted (5,348 in the last seven days).

233 patients have been referred to the ICU in the last 24 hours (439 in the last seven days).

Therefore, since the beginning of the pandemic, there are already 269,222 total hospitalized patients and 23,387 total ICU cases.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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