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COVID-19

Spain’s daily coronavirus death rate shoots up again

Spain's daily coronavirus death rate shot up to 743 on Tuesday after falling for four straight days, lifting the total toll to 13,798, the health ministry said.

Published: 7 April 2020 12:02 CEST
Updated: 7 April 2020 16:02 CEST
Spain's daily coronavirus death rate shoots up again
Photo: AFP

The number of new infections in the world's second hardest-hit country after Italy also grew at a faster pace, rising 4.1 percent to 140,510, it added. 

The number of new cases had risen by 3.3 percent on Monday.   

Health ministry officials have said deaths occurring on the weekend are often registered a few days later, which may explain the rise.

However, it emphasised that the rise was due to weekend deaths being tallied and that the overall “downward trend” is continuing.   

The new figure represents a 5.7 percent increase over the 637 deaths recorded on Monday, the lowest number of fatalities since March 24 in the world's second hardest-hit country after Italy in terms of deaths.

The number of new infections also grew at a faster pace, rising 4.1 percent to 140,510, the health ministry said. The number of new cases had risen by 3.3 percent on Monday.

 

Sunday had seen an increase of 6,023 confirmed cases over Saturday – which had seen an increase of 7,026 confirmed cases over Friday. 

The figure for Friday was an increase of 7,472 over Thursday.

 

Monday's figures showed an increase of 4,273 over the day before while Tuesdays bucked that trend and showed an increase of 5,478 cases.

The “slight” rise was due largely to the fact that many deaths and new infections which occur over the weekend are only now being tallied, said Maria Jose Sierra of the health ministry's emergencies coordination unit.

 

“In reality the downward trend is what we continue to observe in the reports we have received in recent days,” she told a daily news conference to discuss the figures.


The overall number of hospitalizations (blue), admittance into ICU (yellow) deaths (red) and recoveries (green) are shown in the chart below, which reveals that the curve of the number of hospital admittances is flattening. Data: Ministry of Health

The percentage increase in the number of new deaths is far lower than the 32.63 percent leap recorded as recently as March 21st.   

Mari Angels Rodriguez, a nurse at the Hospital Josep Trueta hospital in Girona in northeastern Spain, said the volume of work in the intensive care unit had fallen “a lot”.

“The collapse in the first few days was brutal, everyone was coming to emergency services, all the usual causes as well as all the possible cases of COVID-19,” she told AFP.

“What wears me out the most is seeing young and middle aged people, without chronic conditions, who arrive in moderate shape and quickly end up in the intensive care unit (ICU).”

“The other day a 17-year-old girl was admitted to hospital and the next day she was in the ICU. It is full of young people. Psychologically you are not ready for this,” she added.

“It hits you the speed with which a patient gets seriously ill. When they start to get bad, it is like they are drowning, in half an hour they are intubated or are dead.”

 

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The breakdown of cases, hospitalizations, deaths and recoveries is outline in the tweet below:

 

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COVID-19

Public Health Agency recommends two Covid doses next year for elderly

Sweden's Public Health Agency is recommending that those above the age of 80 should receive two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine a year, once in the spring and once in the autumn, as it shifts towards a longer-term strategy for the virus.

Published: 23 December 2022 10:53 CET
Public Health Agency recommends two Covid doses next year for elderly

In a new recommendation, the agency said that those living in elderly care centres, and those above the age of 80 should from March 1st receive two vaccinations a year, with a six month gap between doses. 

“Elderly people develop a somewhat worse immune defence after vaccination and immunity wanes faster than among young and healthy people,” the agency said. “That means that elderly people have a greater need of booster doses than younger ones. The Swedish Public Health Agency considers, based on the current knowledge, that it will be important even going into the future to have booster doses for the elderly and people in risk groups.” 

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People between the ages of 65 and 79 years old and young people with risk factors, such as obesity, diabetes, poor kidney function or high blood pressure, are recommended to take one additional dose per year.

The new vaccination recommendation, which will start to apply from March 1st next year, is only for 2023, Johanna Rubin, the investigator in the agency’s vaccination programme unit, explained. 

She said too much was still unclear about how long protection from vaccination lasted to institute a permanent programme.

“This recommendation applies to 2023. There is not really an abundance of data on how long protection lasts after a booster dose, of course, but this is what we can say for now,” she told the TT newswire. 

It was likely, however, that elderly people would end up being given an annual dose to protect them from any new variants, as has long been the case with influenza.

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