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The Generalitat of Catalonia does not offer its population a real number of deaths from coronavirus that have been occurring since the start of the pandemic. The Catalan Government admits that the deaths exceed the official figure that it transfers daily to the Ministry of Health and that it is taken as a reference to analyze the evolution of the health crisis.

This computation only considers the deaths that have taken place in hospital centers, but does not include deaths in nursing homes and homes, with which the actual mortality of Covid-19 in the autonomous community necessarily exceeds the official figure. For a while, it continues to be a mystery to Catalans.

Officially, 3,666 people have died in Catalonia of the coronavirus, according to the latest figure offered by the Health Department of the Generalitat. This figure corresponds to patients who died in Catalan hospitals, who have been reporting deaths promptly since an 87-year-old woman lost her life to Covid-19 at the Germans Trias i Pujol Hospital in Badalona on March 7.

The registry of deceased offered by the health centers of Catalonia was the only figure transferred to the population until April 1. On that date - and after having ignored until then the avalanche of deaths that had already occurred in nursing homes - the Generalitat reported that 362 elderly people had already died in Catalan residences.

According to the latest count prepared by the nursing homes themselves with the few means available to them, there are already 1,898 deaths at their facilities. However, the Generalitat specifies that this figure cannot be added to that of hospital deaths because some of the elderly - the least, as the directors of nursing homes continue to report - have died in hospitals after being referred.

The Generalitat recognizes that there are more deaths

In conclusion, the Generalitat admits that there are more deaths from coronavirus than the 3,666 officers, but it does not specify how many more.

But there is still a third accounting, that of funeral homes. On April 1, the Generalitat approved a resolution forcing the funeral services of Catalonia to notify them of deaths from coronavirus that would appear from that date, according to the death certificates that accompany the corpses and which are not always Exactly because of the lack of tests in nursing homes and because deaths in homes are sometimes classified as "probable" deaths by Covid-19, according to sources in the sector.

The Government justified the measure on the grounds that "it is necessary to have the data to identify the deceased, taking into account the considerable increase in deaths produced in Catalonia due to the Covid-19 disease".

The Catalan Executive reminded funeral homes that "it is essential to have data to analyze the spread of the disease and to plan health resources." However, the figures provided by funeral homes since April began have not yet been incorporated into the official count of deceased that is made public and is still limited to the deaths that have taken place in Catalan hospitals.

"We give real, unofficial data"

Several leaders have already discussed the official data with more or less vehemence. They have done so by brandishing data from their respective territories. The Mayor of Barcelona, ​​Ada Colau, reported that the city's funeral services quantified 1,300 deaths in March more than the average registered during the months of March of the previous ten years.

Last month 2,629 people died in the Catalan capital, compared to 1,300 who regularly did so in the last decade.

Much more forceful is being the mayor of Igualada , who, tired of the contempt of the Generalitat, has had no qualms in publicly discussing his death calculations. "We do not give official data, we give real data. The real data of the funeral home," clarified last Saturday, July 11, Marc Castells , who is not a member of the PDeCAT who is standing up to the Government of Quim Torra to denounce the situation to which its population has been forced after spending 15 days isolated from the rest of Catalonia by the virulent outbreak detected on March 12.

On April 4, Castells corrected the Govern for the first time, after it claimed that in the last 24 hours no person had died in Igualada by Covid-19. The mayor of the town took the floor to deny the Generalitat and reported that, in reality, there had been 11 deaths in the town in the last day.

"The records are the most reliable"

"We do not give the data, we have the information. We are concerned that an equivocal message could be given to the population," argued the first mayor, who described the deaths: four in the Igualada Hospital and seven in social and health facilities or their own houses. "Public Health records are the most reliable we have," contested Health Minister Alba Vergés , clinging to the record of deaths in hospitals.

After the lifting of the confinement in Igualada, on April 6, the Government stopped offering detailed figures of the deaths in the Barcelona town, but its mayor continues to offer its own registry of deaths. From "real" figures, as he insisted last Saturday, when he specified that, so far in April, the deaths in the municipalities of the Ódena basin - which make up Igualada and its adjacent towns - have increased by 385% with respect to to the same period last year.

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