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Coronavirus is spreading much faster in Spain than in Europe.After a relative break in the summer, experts fear that a new wave will be signed across the continent.
By Patrick Kingsley and Joseph Bautista
ATHA, Spain – At noon on Sunday, 31 patients were at the main coronavirus treatment center in Malaga, the city with the fastest emerging infection rate in southern Spain. At 12:15 p.m., number 32 arrived by ambulance. Half an hour later I got to number 33.
The trash can near the door brimming with blue mask and surgical gloves.The relatives were silently left outside, one of them crying, another feeling a trail of déja vu.
“My brother-in-law had the virus in the spring,” said Julia Bautista, a 58-year-old retired administrator, waiting for news on Her 91-year-old father’s Sunday.
“Here we passed again, ” he added.
If Italy is the harbinger of the first wave of coronavirus pandemic in Europe in February, Spain is the harbinger.
France is also expanding, as are parts of Eastern Europe, and cases are multiplying in Germany, Greece, Italy and Belgium as well, however last week Spain recorded by far the maximum number of new cases on the continent: more than 53,000.With a population of 100,000 as well, the virus spreads faster in Spain than in the United States, more than twice as many as in France, about 8 times more in Italy and Britain and ten times faster in Germany.
Spain is already one of the most affected countries in Europe, and today it has about 440,000 cases and more than 29,000 deaths, but after one of the strictest blockades in the world, which helped curb the spread of the virus, experienced one of the fastest.The return of nightlife and organisation activities, much faster than the maximum of its European neighbours, has contributed to the resurgence of the epidemic.
Today, as other Europeans contemplate how to restart their economies while protecting human life, Spaniards have an early indicator of how a momentary wave can occur, how hard it can strike, and how it can be contained.
“Spain would possibly be the canary of the coal mine,” said Professor Antoni Trilla, an epidemiologist at the Barcelona Institute of Global Health, a group of studies.”Many countries can stay with us, but not at the same speed or at the same number of cases we face.”
Certainly, doctors and politicians are as terrified of Spain’s wave of moments as they are by the first.The mortality rate is about a part of the rate at the height of the crisis, falling to 6.6% from the 12% peak in May.
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