Coronavirus in numbers - Nations

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Yet another rise for Spain today in figures released to the WHO. Up 424 to 4635 from 4211. Spain higher even than the UK today, second globally to the USA. The health official who said two weeks ago that Spain may have 2m infected isn't far wide of the mark. There is no other reasoning to it.

As always, full spreadsheets can be found here.

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It is said that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Here's a classic example of Spain's incompetence in all of this.
Sam and I have discussed elsewhere the sheer numbers of Canarian HCP's that have been infected with this hellish virus, Proof positive here in EL Pais today that this level of madness is not exclusive to the Canaries.

Spain ranks first for COVID-19 infections among healthcare workers

Experts blame lack of foresight by authorities for the high impact of the coronavirus on Spanish professionals


A report published on Thursday by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) underscores that 20% of registered coronavirus cases in Spain are healthcare workers, compared with 10% in Italy as a whole (in the hard-hit region of Lombardy the percentage rises to 20%). In the United States, infected healthcare workers represent 3% of total cases, while in China they are 3.8%.

Healthcare professionals went to war without protection


Although the ECDC study uses Spanish figures from April 21, more recent data confirms this trend. On Friday, the Health Ministry reported that 35,295 healthcare workers are infected, 940 more than on Thursday. In Italy, the second most affected European country, there are just under 18,000 infected healthcare workers, according to figures released on Tuesday by Italian health authorities.
Besides the more than 35,000 health professionals, an EL PAÍS estimate based on available regional statistics shows that nearly 12,000 employees of senior residences and other care centers have also been infected. But the real figure is probably much higher due to under-reporting. The Basque Country, Navarre and Castilla y León do not offer figures from care centers, while Madrid only reports those from public residences, which represent a fraction of the total.

Lack of measures

The high number of infections among health personnel in Spain is due to the absence of “the indispensable safety measures” that should have preserved their health, according to the Spanish Medical Colleges Organization (OMC), a regulatory body for the medical profession. The OMC also notes that 37 healthcare workers have died of coronavirus in Spain.
“There weren’t face masks for the workers. And when the masks arrived, many of them were defective. At this point in time, not all doctors and professionals have been tested yet. You cannot confront an epidemic of this magnitude in these conditions,” says the organization, which is planning to pursue legal action in cases involving defective face masks for healthcare workers.
Manuel Cascos, president of the nurses’ union Satse, also blames a lack of protective gear and testing kits for the high prevalence of infections among health personnel. “This was the determining factor,” says Cascos.
The union estimates that between 60% and 65% of affected healthcare workers are nurses. “The lack of foresight and diligence by the relevant health authorities has put healthcare professionals in a position of great defenselessness, where they remain to this day,” says Cascos.
Satse said it will report this “deplorable situation” to the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Labor Organization and the European Commission, among others.

A known risk

“Healthcare professionals went to war without protection,” says Daniel López Acuña, a former WHO official who teaches at the Andalusian School of Public Health. “First they got infected, and later, without knowing it because many of them were asymptomatic, they infected colleagues and patients.”
López Acuña sees “an aggregation of factors” behind the enormous impact of the coronavirus on Spanish healthcare personnel. “Many health facilities did not have enough protective gear. The recommendations to use masks were not uniformly issued at the beginning of the epidemic. And the very limited number of tests performed at the beginning prevented us from knowing what proportion of health professionals were infected.”
“But to me, the determining factor, the one that has multiplied and made worse all of the above, is the asymptomatic transmission of the virus,” he adds.

You cannot confront an epidemic of this magnitude in these conditions

José María Martín Moreno, a professor of preventive medicine and public health at Valencia University, laments the fact that authorities did not adopt the lessons learned from the SARS and MERS epidemics early on. “The risk for health professionals was a known factor. But for some reason, the system was not made ready in time.”
Yet despite these shortages, he adds, professionals at health centers and senior residences continued to perform their work “out of ethics, professionalism and a sense of duty.” This in turn raised the probability of contagion.

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It Just gets worse and worse. (Live links)

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          And Worse

Spain's figure for today as reported to the WHO takes us back to the place we were in 3 weeks ago. Three weeks ago! I don't need telling why.
An increase of 2105 today over yesterday's already bad 4635 to 6740  putting us comfortably back into the 3% of the total bracket. This, from a country with more HCP's infected* than either the Netherlands' or Belgium's total infections.




* The article above explains all. I'm devastated for these dedicated professionals who just keep giving.

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Spain, in their infinite wisdom, chose not to furnish the WHO with figures yesterday. Because the forum is principally the Canaries and therefore Spain, I did not update in the usual way.
Today, unusually, the WHO has not as yet carried out their daily update. Complacency on their behalf, or something else? I know that we all want this wretched thing to go away but...
Unless of course, the WHO is waiting upon the Spanish government again. The figure for yesterday remains at "pending".

Edit to add,

The WHO has published their daily update in the last few minutes which I've just looked at. Once again, Spain's figures are "pending".
Reported figures of infections from Spain to the WHO are currently 207,634, Worldometers however, are reporting a total of 229,422. There's a discrepancy of 21,788. Who to believe? Mas o menos veinte mil  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Edit two.

Shall I laugh or cry, Spain hasn't declared figures for today but wants a     refund   of at least 12,000 who were infected, ummm, or weren't. Well maybe,we arent sure "Sod this Pedro, how do we make these figures look good this week, we don't want to be accused of anything with the builders, you know,wink, wink". Pedro walks away looking in his coat pocket for a fag, turns and says, "I told you those testing kits were crap, you better get your arse into gear and get some proper ones, that work".

Anyhow, the WHO's statement,

The Ministry of Health, Consumer Affairs and Social Welfare of Spain has recently changed its criteria for reporting COVID-19 cases to include only those with positive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test results. This has resulted in a retrospective decrease of 12,130 cases. Spain will continue to report only new PCR positive cases.

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!2,130 people cured of SARS-Cov2 by never having it claims a lunatic fringe agnostic with a fertile mind. David Icke sez...

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USA tops 1m today according to Worldometers.

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!2,130 people cured of SARS-Cov2 by never having it claims a lunatic fringe agnostic with a fertile mind. David Icke sez...

Sorry Milestone, you've completely lost me there.  

My miserable attempt at humour.

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Today, Spain has declared figures to the WHO. I'm not capable of commenting on their declaration as frankly, the figures are meaningless. The government's shenanigans with reported numbers will take a number of days to settle into something that is both cogent and candid. Alien abductions excepted of course.

Strange that France's figures are so erratic. There must be a reason for this, I know that they have changed their method of counting and are now supposedly including care homes. Could it be that care home figures are just hebdomadal collations?





Thanks for the source shift key Sam,   ideal when putting this kind of post together.

Edit to add one of these,    further up page lest people think that I'm serious.

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Who said anything about candour? Cynic, me? Nah, never.