Pressure on Madrid hospitals rising as Covid-19 cases surge in Spain once more

Of Spain’s regions, Madrid is currently under the most pressure when it comes to the number of coronavirus cases in its hospitals. That’s according to the latest data from the Spanish Health Ministry about the progress of the epidemic, and which was released on Wednesday evening. The regional healthcare centers are currently treating 1,800 patients, 175 of whom are in intensive care units (ICUs) – 13.6% of the hospital beds in the entire region. Until Tuesday, Aragón was the region that topped this list.

As well as the rise in patients in Madrid, the figures released on Wednesday confirmed what is now a trend of rapidly rising cases throughout Spain. In fact, the country is already considered to be immersed in a second wave of the epidemic. For a week now, the Health Ministry has been reporting around 7,000 new cases every day, and there are no signs of this trend changing.

With 2,213 new cases, Madrid continues to be the region with the highest number of cases each day

On Wednesday, the ministry reported 7,296 new cases on a national level, but this figure did not include data from the Valencia region, “due to technical problems.” This absence is significant, given that the region has seen a considerable rise in positive cases – 770 on Tuesday – meaning that the real figure for Spain on Wednesday was more likely 8,000 cases.

Positives detected in the previous 24 hours came in at 3,594 on Wednesday, according to the ministry report. This figure, however, should be viewed with some caution given that several regions send their data to the ministry with considerable delay, a problem that also affects the total number of fatalities. In total, Spain has detected 419,849 coronavirus cases since the health crisis took hold in March.

With 2,213 new cases, Madrid continues to be the region with the highest number of cases each day, although its relative weight has slowly fallen in recent days. The reason for this is the rise in cases that are being seen on the Mediterranean coast and the Canary and Balearic islands. Catalonia and the Basque Country continue to see a high incidence of the coronavirus, while in Aragón the situation is slowly improving.

As the experts warned when infections started to rise, the number of hospitalizations and ICU admissions is also increasing. The data show that after a rise in positive cases, patients with more serious symptoms require hospital treatment around two weeks later, and shortly after that the number of deaths also begins to spike.

There are currently 5,903 patients being treated for Covid-19 in Spain, of whom 697 are in the ICU

According to the ministry, there are currently 5,903 patients being treated for Covid-19, of whom 697 are in the ICU. This is an increase of 215 patients and 20 ICU admissions compared to the day before, taking hospital occupation in all of Spain to 5.5% of beds across the country.

The Health Ministry also reported 47 new fatalities compared to yesterday in the overall totals, with 129 registered over the last seven days. This data point also, however, is subject to considerable delay in terms of notifications.

English version by Simon Hunter.