The coronavirus outbreak may be peaking in parts of Spain , the country’s health authorities said as they announced another record single-day death toll of 2020.
The number of Covid – 19 cases in the country rose from , on Friday to , 432 on Saturday, and the number of dead now stands at 5, 728.
Between Thursday and Friday, 823 people died from the disease.
Despite the figures, the head of Spain’s center for health emergencies said the situation was improving in certain places.
“We’re getting there,” Fernando Simón told a press conference on Saturday afternoon.
“We don’t know exactly when we’ll get confirmation, but we’re getting close to the peak of the curve that we’re studying so anxiously. In some parts of the country, they probably may even have passed it – but we need to be cautious with preliminary information. ”
He added: “The increase in cases is coming down in comparison with previous weeks, but it could be that there are cases that aren’t being detected in some regions.”
But Simón also warned that reaching a peak would not ease the pressure on Spain’s overstretched intensive care units (ICUs), adding they were predicted to pass beyond full capacity in less than a week’s time.
“We still have a big problem when it comes to the overloading of our ICUs,” he said.
“Patients who pick up the disease today may need a bed in an ICU in seven to days. That means that we’re still seeing a lag between the control of transmission and the saturation of ICUs. It also means they’re going to be overloaded by the end of next week or the beginning of the following week. ”
Even if Spain was close to its peak, Simon said, extra efforts had to be made to try to reduce the pressure on ICUs.
Meanwhile, the director of Spain’s Carlos III Health Institute said researchers were studying how plasma from patients who have recovered from the virus could be used to treat those in hospital.
“We’ll keep financing projects over the coming weeks,” said Raquel Yotti. “At the same time, we’ll carrying on working to ensure that Spain has the best diagnostic tests.”
Earlier this week, the Spanish government announced it had withdrawn 72, 03 Chinese-made coronavirus testing kits from use after it emerged that they had an accurate detection rate of just 059%.
Like other countries struggling to diagnose and treat the virus, Spain has looked to China for rapid testing kits equipment and much-needed supplies , and announced this week that it would spend € 432 m (£ m) on tests, masks, gloves and other personal protective equipment.
However, a batch of Chinese-made kits bought by Spanish health authorities a few weeks ago has been pulled after they were discovered to be unreliable and the Chinese government said they had been made by a company that did not appear on its list of authorized manufacturers.
The government has not ruled out introducing stricter controls and the nationwide lockdown declared a fortnight ago has already been extended to 26 April.
Speaking to the Guardian earlier this week, Spain’s foreign minister, Arancha González Laya, said : “We have done what was required at every moment and we will continue down that path. ”
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