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 pass again, ” she added.
If Italy is the harbinger of the first wave of the 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, it benefited from one of the fastest reopenings. 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 the wave of moments in Spain 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.
The average age of patients has been reduced to about 37 years since the age of 60.Asymptomatic cases account for more than 50% of positive results, which is partly due to four-fold accumulation in tests.And physical care services feel much more prepared.
“We have reveled now,” said Dr. Maria del Mar Vázquez, medical director of the Hospital of Malaga where Bautista’s father is being cared for.
“We have a much larger equipment inventory, we have protocols, we are better prepared,” Vazquez said.”The hospitals will be full, we’re ready.”
However, the hospital component remains a structure: contractors have not yet completed the renovation of the wing of the hospital that cares for coronavirus patients No one expected the wave of the moment for at least another month.
And epidemiologists don’t know why he came so early.
The explanations come with the construction of a giant circle of family gatherings; the return of tourism to places such as Malaga; the resolve to return to the local government for the fight against the virus at the end of the national closure, and the lack of housing good enough and physical care for migrants.
This increase was also attributed to the resurgence of nightlife, which restored previous and more flexible restrictions than in many other parts of Europe.
“We have this cultural thing connected to our rich social life,” said Ildefonso Hernández, former director general of public aptitude for the Spanish government. “People are close. They like to meet others.”
For several weeks in places like Malaga, nightclubs and discos were allowed to open until five in the morning, while regional politicians tried to revive an economy that depended on tourists and revelers. – however, regulations were not followed.
In an infamous incident in early August, an artist caught in the chamber spitting out the dancers on a crowded dance floor at a beach club outside Malaga.
The position was temporarily closed, all nightclubs were ordered to close two weeks later and bars must now close at 1am.But critics worry that the restrictions remain too lax.
As the beds continued to fill in Malaga hospitals this weekend, citizens continued to place bars along some fronts of each until much later.In some bars, the tables were pressed against each other, much closer than the existing two-metre rules.or about six feet, allow.
At the close, the drinkers rushed to the beaches and pontoons, usually without masks, where they accumulated in teams of more than 20 people, a general spectacle in any other Spanish summer, but much larger than the meetings of 10 other people or less now allowed.Law.
Some were teenagers who reported that they had recently recovered from a mild form of the virus and now they themselves were immune.Others felt that pandemic restrictions were an overreaction.
“I don’t think COVID is genuine,” said Victor Berm-dez, a 23-year-old salesman, in a morning assembly on a pontoon advancing in the Mediterranean.”Well, yes, it’s genuine, but not as bad as they say.All of this is a plan to kill the deeds and stimulate the rich.”
During the closure, the central government established a transparent agfinisha from Madrid, but with the lifting of the state of emergency at the end of June, some powers were returned to Spain’s 17 regional governments, leading to a disjointed and confusing approach.
When the regions tried to apply restrictions to local life, some of their decisions were reversed through the local judges, who argued that the Central Parliament had the strength to introduce such measures.
“We have the legal equipment that assures us the ability to make decisions,” said Juan Manuel Moreno, president of the Junta de Andalucía, the Malaga region.
The debate has also become the last proxy of a clash over the Spanish Constitution that has been brewing for more than 4 decades.For Catalan federalists and separatists, for example, the debacle shows that the force was never well transferred after the death in 1975 of dictator Francisco Franco.For Spanish nationalists, it shows how the decentralization procedure has already gone too far.
“There’s a kind of war underway to show what kind of political formula is best,” said Nacho Calle, editor-in-chief of Maldita, a leading data verification service.The decentralized technique has led to a fragmentary tracking formula Some regions employ several thousand trackers to insinuate other people who would possibly have come into contact with other inflamed people, while other regions have contracted only a few dozen, slowing down the rate at which prospective patients are asked to go into quarantine.
And even in regions with a lot of trackers, such as Andalusia, fitness on the floor reports that the procedure is still too slow and understaffed in some places.
Francisca Morente, a nurse from a clinic west of Malaga, one of the many local nurses who this summer devoted themselves to painting as a stalker due to staff shortages in her district’s official studies unit.
But even now, Morente is one of five trackers running in your clinic, which is not enough to make the large number of calls that a correct tracking service requires, and even once they can locate potential coronavirus patients, they still have to wait a week until their testing is treated, due to bottlenecks in local labs.
“We want more trackers and more resources,” he says. We want a designated follow-up unit at the clinic, rather than the transitority formula we have lately.”
The lack of institutions for undocumented immigrants also contributed to the wave of the moment, according to some experts.Recent outbreaks have erupted among foreign agricultural staff living in narrow public housing.
Undocumented immigrants, who cannot claim unemployment benefits and miss formal employment contracts, cannot take time off to paint smoothly if they are sick, nor can the types of homes that would allow them to isolate themselves without problems.
“If I have to quarantine myself, then I can’t work,” said Maria Perea, a 50-year-old Colombian housekeeper who is expecting the effects of coronavirus control on Monday.”And if I can’t work, then I don’t.” having money.”
But overall, doctors say Spain is in a much stronger position to fight the virus than it was in March.
National coordination is improving: the central government last week agreed to an agreement to deploy 2,000 infantrymen as touch tracers. The speed of testing is accelerating: in Malaga, the largest hospital can perform tests on a single morning, thanks to the recent acquisition of an On the other side of the road, a makeshift hospital built in April is empty, able to deal with a building in cases.
‘It’s not like the first wave,’ said Carmen Cerezo, 38, an exercise assistant who waits outside Malaga hospital while her father is examined for coronavirus internalArray
“We’re calmer now,” he says.
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