MADRID | Spain, a European country among the most affected by the coronavirus pandemic, has exceeded the bar of 500,000 diagnosed cases, according to the latest report published on Monday, according to the report of the Ministry of Health.
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Since the start of the pandemic, the country of 47 million inhabitants has recorded 525,549 cases, which represents, compared to its population, a proportion approximately twice as large as that of France or Italy, of after an AFP calculation from official sources.
In the past two weeks, the country has detected an average of 7 to 8,000 cases per day, of which about a third, in the region of the capital, Madrid, epicenter of the epidemic as in the spring.
Despite the recent explosion of new cases which has led to the adoption by the authorities of numerous restrictive measures, mortality remains much lower than that observed during the first wave of contagion in March-April.
The number of COVID-19 victims totals 29,516 in the country, including 237 in the past seven days, far from the peak of the pandemic in early April, when nearly 1,000 people had died in one day.
“The situation is much more favorable” than in the spring, underlined, Monday, the chief epidemiologist of the Ministry of Health, Fernando Simon. “But we are still in an upward phase,” he warned.
The Minister of Health, Salvador Illa, had, on Friday, put forward a rate of occupancy of intensive care units “much lower” than in the spring.
In addition, the average age of carriers of the virus has dropped considerably, to around 40 years, with a greater proportion of asymptomatics detected thanks to a much greater number of tests.
These figures fall in the midst of the start of the school year in the country marked by the fear of many parents to send their children back to schools, which have been closed for six months. The authorities have imposed the compulsory wearing of a mask from 6 years old and at all times at school in order to avoid contamination in establishments.