A surge in new coronavirus sends young patients to Spanish hospitals

Julio Miranda never felt that the threat of the coronavirus was too close. With his first COVID-19 jab scheduled for mid-July, the 48-year-old home painter worries about his personal pandemic, as do many in vaccine-rich developed countries. I was eagerly waiting for the end of.

Then last month, a colleague fell ill, followed by his boss’s wife. Gradually, I noticed that everyone was in bed, except for one of his five colleagues. Miranda from Chile also began to feel abdominal pain. Immediately he lay down on the couch and had a hard time breathing in.

Miranda said this week in a room overlooking Barcelona’s beachfront, she recovered in the intensive care unit for a week, but was consciously connected to a machine that assisted in oxygen intake.

After a brief break returning medical activities to pre-pandemic routines, Hospital Delmar’s manager in this northeastern city relocated staff shifts and moved patients to vast facilities. We are facing a pandemic of infection.

The increase occurs in the progress of coronavirus delta mutants, which spread more easily. And it is mainly driven by unvaccinated young patients who do not require much care in the ICU but are rushing to health centers and emergency wards. When they reach the stage of needing hospitalization, they usually spend more time in a normal ward until they recover.

At this facility, the number of COVID-19 patients went from 8 to 35 in just two weeks. This is far from the hundreds that hospitals have cared for during the height of the previous surge. However, according to Juan Pablo Holkahada, who coordinates all COVID-19 activities there, as a warning of what lies ahead unless “dramatic measures” are taken against the spread of the virus. come.

The majority of infected people are asymptomatic, but the rate of surge can only be compared to the rate of the first surge in March 2020, Holkahada said. Most inpatients do not need much respiratory support and corticosteroids are sufficient. However, doctors have seen people in their twenties and early thirties develop severe pneumonia.

In Spain, young people are unvaccinated and mostly sociable, as authorities place a strict priority on older people and the most vulnerable groups. As a result, 21 million people (half of the country’s adult population) are fully vaccinated, of which less than 600,000 are under the age of 30, according to the latest Ministry of Health data.

“It’s too early to think that vaccination will be managed in a short period of time,” said Holkahada, adding that most of his patients were infected before the second vaccination.

As a tourism powerhouse, Spain has lifted restrictions such as curfew and outdoor mask requirements in time for the summer season. The first outbreak was reported shortly after, even before many tourists entered the country.

Many are linked to the first vacation trip, the informal celebration of a traditional summer festival colloquially called “no party”, and the nightlife that resumed as soon as the school closed.

For Horcajada, timing was a disaster recipe. “We are dealing with variants that can be transmitted within seconds of minimal contact with a positive person,” he said.

On Friday, a carefully monitored 14-day infection rate per 100,000 inhabitants rose from a 2021 low of 92 on June 22 to 316 cases. But apart from the previous surge, new deaths are receding before vaccines are available Hospital occupancy is increasing at a fraction of the pace of new infections.

For example, the Spanish Ministry of Health reported the number of deaths confirmed nationwide on Friday 6. This is the lowest number since last summer, compared to 352 on January 5, this year and 217 on October 19, last year. Increased has. At that time, more than one-tenth of normal beds and one-fifth of intensive care units treated COVID-19 patients, but the current occupancy rate is 2.4% for normal beds and 6.6% for ICUs. ..

Similar patterns are found in other countries, the fastest occurring in Europe. In Portugal and Cyprus, hospitals are steadily accumulating patients, but far from previous scenarios on the verge of collapse.

In the United Kingdom, an average of about 30,000 new infections were reported daily in the past week, with a peak of about 70,000 caused by alpha variants during the peak of the winter surge in January. However, the daily death toll at that time exceeded 1,000 in a few days, with 29 recorded on Friday.

Spain’s central and local governments are trying to accelerate immunization of young groups, but are wary of curfew and drastic measures such as travel bans that affect tourism. France and Germany have already discouraged travel to Spain and its neighboring Portugal. This is a move that has thwarted attempts by the tourism industry to recover.

Experts and medical personnel complain that authorities are sending mixed-signal signals. For example, in northeastern Catalonia, where Barcelona is located, only bars and nightclubs can operate outdoor spaces starting this weekend, but authorities have allowed music festivals to be held with thousands of people. Those who attend the concert should test for antigen negativeness before attending the fun.

Ana Aguilar, a 20-year-old nurse at Hospital del Mar, sympathized with those who wanted to have a party, but said her generation needed to be more patient. As a healthcare professional, she also expressed frustration with an endless cycle of virus surges.

“When everything seems to be restarting, the virus reoccurs, and that’s the same thing,” Aguilar said. “It’s very tiring, uncertainty makes it very difficult to deal with.”

Para reported from Madrid.

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