Spain's Coronavirus Death Toll Could Reach 87,000 If Measures Are Not Followed
Health News
Published: 18 March 2020 14:20 CET
Updated: 18 March 2020 15:20 CET
Spain’s ICU doctors and nurses have warned that the Coronavirus death toll could reach 87,000 if strict measures are not followed.
Under current contingency plans to deal with the growing Covid-19 pandemic, intensive care specialists have outlined their critical points and possible scenarios on how the contagion may develop and impact the Spanish population.
With scientific evidence on the pandemic currently at a minimum, the Semicyuc scientific society has looked to the FluSurge 2.0 software from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States to analyse the propagation and mortality rates of the virus.
Although the software was designed to predict the impact of an influenza pandemic, there are similarities with the software able to make rough calculations on the demand for hospital-based services during the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to the calculations made, the outlook for Spanish citizens is ‘bleak’ when analysing the current scenario in the most affected autonomous communities.
The most likely scenario shows figures of 278,435 people hospitalised and 55,987 deaths in Spain within the first 12 weeks of the outbreak.
However, the data suggests that the numbers will range from 36,000 deaths in the best case scenario and 87,000 in the worst case.
Spain is still in the early stages of the pandemic with the peak infections and deaths estimated to occur during the seventh week. Depending on which autonomous region you are in, you will currently be experiencing the first or second week of the epidemic.
During the seventh week, it is predicted that there would be 41,765 hospital admissions in and 6,673 admissions in a single day.
Under these scenarios, bed occupancy would be at 67,412 with 74% of available from public hospitals. In addition to this, 9,257 hospitalised patients would need to be placed in the ICU with 5,454 people requiring mechanical ventilation.
Coordinator of the contingency plan, Pedro Rascado said, “it is not about the forecasts, but serve to calculate the need for resources”.
Intensive care experts affirmed, "We hope that the containment measures proposed can decrease the basic reproductive rhythm and the attack rate. This would decrease the aggressiveness of the pandemic."
As of March 18, Spain’s Health Ministry reports that there have been 13,910 infections with 616 deaths.
You can get all the latest Coronavirus in Spain updates here https://www.healthplanspain.com/blog/health-news/891-coronavirus-spain-latest-news-and-updates.html
