• Phase 1. Madrid recommends ending the snacking in front of the Covid-19

On March 2, one of the outbreaks of coronavirus that most worried experts was that caused by an evangelical religious group in Torrejón de Ardoz for which Health was considering raising the risk scenario in the municipality. The town was designated as ground zero in the region where the Covid-19 pandemic has hit the hardest: the Autonomous Community of Madrid (CAM) exceeds 68,000 positives and confirmed fatalities are now close to 8,700 .

"When we saw what happened in Torrejón, we already knew that we were all going to suffer," says the mayor of the neighboring town, Alcalá de Henares, Javier Rodríguez Palacios . The incidence of the virus has been very different in each of the municipalities. Although the first outbreak was detected in the Henares Corridor, on March 20 the Severo Ochoa Hospital in Leganés was already "at full capacity" and since early April the southern municipality was consolidated as the most affected in the region. At the end of this week, more than 3,100 residents had been infected since the start of the pandemic: 1.6% of the population.

The mayor of the municipality, Santiago Llorente , is "angry and very upset" with the situation in a telephone conversation with this newspaper. "Apart from the number of people who have been infected, we have very little information," he says. The town has registered more than twice as many cases as Getafe, a nearby municipality with a "similar socioeconomic structure", in the words of Llorente. "We are blind," he insists. "We do not know what the reasons are and I am not aware that anyone is reviewing these data to find out what the foci are."

Precisely in recent days the municipality has registered an increase in the number of cases. Through the information published by Europa Press, Llorente knew that the Ministry of Health ruled out that it was a new focus and attributed the upturn in 59 cases to the "data dumping" of laboratories on "old cases in nursing homes".

IA Covid-19. Madrid

Behind Leganés, among the towns of more than 10,000 residents, Torrelodones, Guadarrama, Alcalá de Henares and Madrid , in that order, have been the most affected. And at least 1% of the inhabitants have also passed the disease in Alcorcón, Valdemoro, San Fernando de Henares, Brunete, Móstoles, Ciempozuelos and Coslada , according to data published by the Community of Madrid.

The Mayor of Complutense puts at more than 850 residents who have died, of whom 351 lived in a nursing home. The confirmed cases in Alcalá, according to Community figures, amount to 2,393. According to the register of social services centers, the city has a dozen nursing homes and for Rodríguez Palacios this has been one of the factors that explains the serious situation experienced, although it also points to the high labor mobility of the Henares Corridor.

Given the serious situation in the residences, Alcorcón requested the High Court of Justice of Madrid to intervene in them. After the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the court agreed that the Ministry of Health should "immediately" equip the residences of the municipality with means and health personnel, Leganés followed the same path. "The court established precautionary measures to medicalize the residences and today they are not," regrets Llorente. "Tonight there will be no doctor in any of the eight residences in Leganés," he adds. The elderly who died in these centers totaled 5,972 on Wednesday throughout the region, Roberto Bécares reported.

The Ministry of Health indicates that "232 residences have been medicalized through 633 interventions by Primary Care professionals and 27,966 interventions by hospital teams" but it does not detail which centers it is and what these actions consist of.

Vitalia Leganés is one of the 14 residences, out of a total of 495, operated by the Regional Government Department of Social Affairs. "The intervention consisted of sending an official who contrasts the information provided by the residence itself," says Llorente. According to the mayor, 95 people have died in this residence and all the residents, around 130, have tested positive for coronavirus. From the center they have not made statements about it.

On behalf of the private center located in the Leganés Norte neighborhood, according to the mayor's office, PCR-type diagnostic tests were carried out on both staff and residents. The incidence per inhabitant in that area went from one day to the next to be more than double that registered. The Basic Health Zones (ZBS) into which the Primary Care is divided in the region have a 2.33% infection rate in this area of ​​the municipality .

Even higher is the total incidence accumulated in Puerta de Madrid, one of the ZBS into which the municipality of Alcalá de Henares is divided, where 2.38% have tested positive for PCR. In the following interactive map you can see how evolution has been in each health area. This division, which corresponds to the area served by each primary care health center, provides information in the most populated localities with much greater detail than the municipal level. Search for a municipality and click on an area on the map to see the details of the evolution.

Source: Ministry of Health of the Community of Madrid

With 1,725 ​​residents and 51 positives, Colmenar del Arroyo is the municipality with the highest incidence rate per inhabitant: practically three out of every 100 residents of the town have been diagnosed with the virus. Aldea del Fresno is another of the towns with the highest incidence. Its mayor, María Isabel Hernánde z, does not quite understand "where that comes from." "There are two residences and in both there have been cases," but he clarifies that, according to his information, the number of affected residents would be around six.

The incidence, which is measured from the population that each municipality had at the beginning of 2019, could be somewhat different in those localities with fewer inhabitants. If in 2019 Aldea del Fresno had 2,918 neighbors, its mayor reports that today there are more than 3,100. With 58 confirmed cases, the incidence could be somewhat lower than the official data.

Regardless of the figures, Hernández says that "like all peoples, we have lived it fatally." From the consistory they have made an effort to cover the purchase of food: "We have tried to help all the people who needed it, and the number has risen like foam."

Among the most populated municipalities, the lowest incidences of the disease have occurred in Paracuellos del Jarama, Valdemorillo and Daganzo de Arriba , where less than 0.4% of the residents have been diagnosed with Covid-19. As of May 27, the closing date of this analysis, 14 towns register an incidence of 0 cases per 100,000 residents. Valdepiélagos , with 584 inhabitants, is the most populated among the coronavirus-free localities in the region.

On the possibility that a new outbreak of the pandemic could reach the municipality, the mayor of Alcalá points out the importance of individual responsibility when following health recommendations, such as keeping distance or washing hands: «There is no police or public means that can control everything we do ». From Leganés, Llorente says he is concerned that a rebound in the fall will come before knowing "what we have done wrong." "Autumn is just around the corner and information is used to make decisions," he concludes.

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