20 Aug, 2020 @ 23:11
1 min read

Spain adds more than 7,000 COVID-19 cases as health chief Fernando Simon admits ‘things are not going well’

Fernando Simon

SPAIN has added 7,039 COVID-19 infections to its running total today, with 3,349 being detected in the past 24 hours.

It brings the total number of official cases since the start of the pandemic to 377,906.

Madrid continues to be the most affected, recording 1,020 positive test results between Wednesday and Thursday.

The Basque Country, which declared a health emergency on Monday, follows in a distant second with 547 new cases over the same period.

Third is Aragon (352), then Andalucia (302), Catalunya (180) and the Balearic Islands (171).

All other regions registered less than 150 infections in the past 24 hours.

In a press conference today, head of health emergencies Fernando Simon said: “Don’t get it confused, things are not going well.

“Each day we are seeing more and more transmission.”

Pressure is now beginning to mount on health centres with 4,636 people now being treated for COVID-19 in hospitals, with 522 in intensive care.

According to the Health Ministry, COVID-19 patients now take up 4.3% of total available beds in the country.

This figure is worse in some regions, with coronavirus sufferers taking 13.4% of beds in Aragon, 9.5% in Madrid and 8.3% in the Basque Country.

Meanwhile, hospitalisations are exceeding discharges by a ratio of almost two to one.

The new figures also reveal that 16 people have died from the virus in the past 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 28,813.

What is also of concern is the rise in the COVID-19 incidence rate i.e. the average number of infections per 100,000 over the past 14 days.

That number now stands at 142.27 per 100,000 inhabitants, up from 136.02 on Wednesday.

However the rate is wildly different among regions, with Aragon topping the list with 509.67 per 100,000 people. It’s followed by Madrid (288.25), the Basque Country (262.71) and Navarra (210.02). The rest of the regions remain below 200.

Simon already admitted yesterday that the statistics ‘are not good’, but praised the tracking capabilities of the autonomous regions.

“We are close to knowing the real situation of the virus in Spain,” he said.

Between August 7 and 13, a total of 428,534 PCR tests were performed throughout the country.

“The number of tests is increasing and we are now performing more than 60,000 a day,” added Simon.

Since the end of lockdown, there have been 1,777 outbreaks, with 18,968 cases reported.

Of these, 1,126 are still active and 12,400 people still have the virus.

Laurence Dollimore

Laurence Dollimore is a Spanish-speaking, NCTJ-trained journalist with almost a decade’s worth of experience.
The London native has a BA in International Relations from the University of Leeds and and an MA in the same subject from Queen Mary University London.
He earned his gold star diploma in multimedia journalism at the prestigious News Associates in London in 2016, before immediately joining the Olive Press at their offices on the Costa del Sol.
After a five-year stint, Laurence returned to the UK to work as a senior reporter at the Mail Online, where he remained for two years before coming back to the Olive Press as Digital Editor in 2023.
He continues to work for the biggest newspapers in the UK, who hire him to investigate and report on stories in Spain.
These include the Daily Mail, Telegraph, Mail Online, Mail on Sunday and The Sun and Sun Online.
He has broken world exclusives on everything from the Madeleine McCann case to the anti-tourism movement in Tenerife.

GOT A STORY? Contact newsdesk@theolivepress.es or call +34 951 273 575 Twitter: @olivepress

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