Spain Covid Cases Halve In Last Two Weeks As Second Wave Recedes

The latest figures from the Spanish Health Ministry show a dramatic fall in the number of new Covid-19 infections in the country.

The figures released yesterday show that there were 25,886 cases compared to 52,386 two weeks ago.

Fernando Simón, the govenment´s director for the co-ordination of the covid response centre was cautiously optimistic but added that there is a question mark if the downward trend will continue.

The national average has now fallen from 460 cases per 100,000 inhabitants to 374 cases with all regions now showing falls.

The reduction in the number of cases is also having a knock on effect on hospital admissions with a further fall of 17,695 patients representing 14% of all hospital beds and of whom just under 30% are in ICU intensive care beds.

Simón has also indicated that it is normal for the number of tests to fall in line with the number of diagnoses. In the week to November 19th there were over a million tests of which 30% were antigen tests with a positivity rate of 11% compared to 13% a week earlier.

The Madrid regional health authorities have conducted 421,000 tests of which 1,544 have been positive.

To date Spain has recorded over 1.6 million cases and 43,000 deaths.