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Just when you thought you’d heard the last of Covid-19, the health authorities in Andalucia have dropped a bombshell: the number of Acute Respiratory Infections (ARIs) has been increasing steadily over the past few weeks and the positivity rate for coronavirus has tripled since the last week of April.

 

On the plus side, this surge in cases isn’t necessarily translating into very serious illness, and hospital pressure remains relatively stable for now.

 

According to the Ministry of Health, ARIs have risen from 255.8 cases per 200,000 inhabitants to 307.4 in a week, but this is still well below the national average in Spain, which is sitting at 477.1 infections.

 

According to data from the Andalusian Health Service (SAS), in the last week the number of emergencies attended to in public centres has increased by 4.72% and admissions by 2.73%.

 

In Spain as a whole, hospitalisations linked to Covid have certainly jumped in the last fortnight, going from 0.3 to 1.3 admissions per 100,000 people. And while the number of hospitalisations in older people between the ages of 65 and 79 has actually quintupled during the same period, the health authorities insist that this isn’t putting any undue strain on the hospitals.

 

 

The fact that coronavirus cases in Andalucía and Spain as a whole have tripled could be down to the presence of yet another variant, which reared its head in the US three months ago and has just been diagnosed in two patients in Barcelona.

 

This new strain, which is spreading rapidly, is known as FliRT. Experts believe it has a far greater contagion capacity than previous variants and is on its way to becoming dominant on a global scale.

 

The head of the infectious diseases service at the Germans Trias hospital, Roger Paredes, pointed out, “It is possible, although not certain, that we will have a significant increase in infections in the coming weeks. If infections increase, hospitalisations among patients will also increase, placing people at greater risk of suffering complications from Covid.”

 

 

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