ARCHIVED - 100 more deaths as the coronavirus incidence rate across Spain dips slightly: Update April 13
The latest figures are distorted by a lack of new data from the region of Andalucía
The most recent pandemic update published on Tuesday evening by Spain’s Ministry of Health appears at first sight to provide some welcome good news, with the 14-day accumulated incidence rate dropping by three points to 196.2 new confirmed cases per 100,000 inhabitants, but unfortunately this slight improvement can be attributed mainly to a technical problem which means that no new infections were reported by the heath service of Andalucía.
The resulting distortion of the data is an important one as Andalucía is the most heavily populated of the country’s 17 regions, accounting for 17.8 per cent of the population, and a far better idea of the ongoing trend can be gleaned from the fact that the rates rose in almost all of the other Autonomous Communities. While 6,292 new infections were confirmed the sharpest daily increases were seen in Castilla-La Mancha (7.1 per cent, Cantabria (4.4 per cent and the Basque Country (3.1 per cent), although at the other end of the scale a drop of 6.5 per cent was calculated in Catalunya.
The upshot of this is that three regions remain well above the 250 “extreme risk” threshold - Navarra (425.6 cases per 100,000 inhabitants), Madrid (341) and the Basque Country (330), while only the Comunidad Valenciana (35.6) continues to occupy the “low risk” zone. The only other regions to report figures of under 100 are Galicia, Murcia and the Balearics.
100 more fatalities were added to the official Ministry pandemic death toll on Tuesday, taking the total up to 76,625, while the proportion of hospital beds occupied by Covid patients dropped slightly to just under 8 per cent. However, the equivalent figure in intensive care units remains dangerously high at 21.6 per cent, and is between 37 and 41 per cent in La Rioja, Catalunya and Madrid.