With Spain entering the summer period, the figures for Covid cases are climbing, worryingly, the Central Government considers, and the question of mask usage has been raised.
Just this week in the province of Granada, for example, 108 people were hospitalised. Málaga, is worse as there have been 138 people hospitalised, nine of whom are in the ICU. These figures are cases since this Tuesday, by the way.
Of course, what is happening in Andalucía is happening all over the country; all over Europe, in fact. Consequently the Minister of Public Health for the Central Government, Carolina Darias, has called for responsible mask use. That doesn’t mean obligatory mask use, but only ‘recommended use, which is the case in the regional areas of Madrid, Cataluña and Castilla-Leon.
Although 92% of all Spaniards over 12-years old have had the double dose, the percentage for those that had the third, top-up jab, is much lower, especially those between 20 & 29 (40.58%) and between 30 & 39 (47.1%)
However, two years and four month since the outbreak nobody envisaged that the situation would still be like this. In fact, the figures that the Ministry of Health gave on the 1st of July are objectively worse than the same day in the last two years.
The contagion figure for the over-60s group is 996.25 per 100,000 whereas the figure for all age groups one year ago was only 134,31 per 100k (47.39 per 100k for the 60-69 group). The figure two years ago on the 1st of July, just after having come out of three months confinement in our homes, was 8.47 per 100k.
Finally, bear in mind that nowadays not all cases are reported. Many people over 60 have had a mild case of Covid, which is like having mild flu (myself amongst them), so they don’t report it to the health authorities. in other words here are thousands of people out there that probably had it and didn’t know it or put it down to having a cold.
Because of this present situation, the Sociedad Española de Medicina de Urgencias y Emergencias (SEMES) warned that “emergency services in Spain are saturated.” But this is not only because of Covid cases, but also because of people suffering other respiratory illnesses or from heat stroke provoked by the heat wave in June causing this overload.
The problem with A&E is that people can’t get quick appointments for their GPs so they turn up at the A&E in medical centres and hospitals, instead.
The situation is especially worrying because medical personnel are taking a well-earned vacation this summer but are not being covered by temporary staff, or at least, in sufficient numbers, so it only takes Covid cases to increase amongst hospital and medical-centre staff for the situation to reach a critical state.
But let us make this clear: the Minister of Health is not talking about obligatory mask use, but that she is considering recommending that people start wearing them again.
(News: Granada, Andalucia)