What's the latest on Spain's Covid-19 cases, deaths and hospital patient numbers?

And the number of people who died from Covid-19 topped 1,000 over the last week, up from a weekly figure of 366 in the first week of October.

The rise to an official total of 38,486 deaths comes a day after the government introduced a new methodology for reporting cases and deaths and added 1,326 fatalities to the official tally.

The number of new cases diagnosed within the previous day climbed by 21,908 bringing Spain’s total of known coronavirus cases since the pandemic began to 1,306,316 cases, according to the latest data release, after the Health Ministry removed double entries and added some cases that were not initially diagnosed as COVID-19.

 

But the data did seem to show that the infection rate across Spain was stabilizing.

Spain’s average 14-day cumulative number of coronavirus cases per 100,000 inhabitants dropped from 528.75 to 527.30 within 24 hours, a very small decrease but enough to suggest that strict new measures introduced across the different regions is starting to prove effective.

Fernando Simón, Spain’s emergency health chief said “care must be taken when interpreting the data” but said it represented a “certain stabilization,” and that a trend could only be established after evaluating such data over a week.

On Wednesday Health Minister Salvador Illa told a news conference it would take two to three weeks for the latest regional restrictions to produce effect, but added that “there is still margin to take additional measures, and there are a great many steps we can still take.”

However hospitilizations and deaths are expected to rise over the next few weeks in the aftermath of the surge in recent outbreaks over the past month.

According to Thursday’s report, across Spain there is an average of 16.35 percent of hospital beds occupied by Covid patients, a figure that soars to 29.2 percent of patients being treated in Intensive Care Units across Spain.

A total of 20,281 people are currently admitted for treatment, compared to 10,949 a month ago, with 2,802 patients currently in ICU beds across Spain.

The regional breakdown of hospital occupancy can be seen in the following chart;

The positivity rate – the figure that shows the proportion of coronavirus tests that come back positive – is remaining stable at an average of 13.3 percent across the country compared to 13.7 percent a week earlier.

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