ARCHIVED - Covid incidence rate in Spain drops to 173 but 108 more fatalities
Only three regions remain above the extreme risk threshold
Once again the latest data published by Spain’s Ministry of Health indicate an apparent improvement in the situation regarding the coronavirus pandemic, with the 14-day accumulated incidence rate falling to 173.8 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, although there are still worries that the end of the national state of emergency last weekend could spark another spate of contagion in the near future.
In Wednesday afternoon’s update the Ministry report a further 6,418 cases across the country and another 108 Covid-related deaths, taking the official toll since the pandemic reached Spain to 79,208. But the number of patients receiving hospital treatment continues to fall and now stands at 7,696, occupying 6.1 per cent of all hospital beds, and the equivalent proportion in intensive care units is down to 20.1 per cent: even in the region of Madrid, where ICUs have been more overstretched than in any other part of the country of late, the figure is at last under 40 per cent, and in Galicia, Extremadura and the Comunidad Valenciana it is below 5 per cent.
The Comunidad Valenciana is also the region with the lowest 14-day incidence rate (32.9 cases per 100,000 inhabitants), although Murcia, Extremadura, Galicia, the Canaries, the Balearics and Asturias are also under 100, while at the other end of the scale only Aragón (270), Madrid (277) and the Basque Country (372) remain above the “extreme risk” threshold of 250.
At the same time, the positivity rate of PCR testing has fallen over the last week to 5.9 per cent, close to the figure of 5% which is considered by the WHO to indicate that the spread of the virus is under control.