Catalonia has passed the awful milestone of 10,000 deaths from coronavirus after latest figures show 150 more people have lost their lives in the last day, according to the Catalan health ministry. This one-day total represents a slight drop compared to Monday's 24-hour figure of 159 deaths. However, the latest increments have pushed the total to new grim heights, with a total of 10,073 people having died due to coronavirus in Catalonia since the epidemic began.
Of these 10,073 deaths in Catalonia, 5,835 took place in hospitals, 2,902 occurred in senior citizens' residences, 120 in public residential care centres and 568 in people's own homes. The remaining cases (648) are not classifiable due to a lack of information. A total of 5,507 of these people had tested positive for coronavirus, while the other 4,566 were not tested, but had shown Covid-19 symptoms and were medically diagnosed as "possible" cases before they died.
This alarming death statistic will not, however, be fully reflected in the total deaths for the Spanish state as a whole, when Spain publishes its collated figures on Wednesday morning. Although the official number of deaths in Spain is also horrific - this Tuesday the total reached 23,822 - it would be many thousands larger if it was calculated on the same basis as the Catalan figure. The Spanish statistic only includes those fatalities whose illness was confirmed by testing before their death, and Spain thus calculated the total deaths in Catalonia as of Tuesday at 4,808, when the Catalan health authorities had estimated it as more than twice as much: 9,923.
The Madrid region, which even in the "conservative" Spanish statistics was credited with a total of 8,048 deaths up till Tuesday, has also been the subject of other data studies which assert that its true coronavirus death toll is significantly higher than shown in the Spanish government data, and the same applies to some other Spanish regions.
The Catalan health system began publishing extra categories of data in mid-April to give a broader perspective on the scale of the epidemic, including a cross-checking system with funeral companies for deaths and a count of unconfirmed cases. Thus, currently, in Catalonia there are a total of 51,672 people who have been diagnosed with Covid-19 after a test, an increase of 1,510 people compared to 24 hours ago; and as well another 111,107 people are regarded as possible cases - as a medical practitioner as diagnosed them as having symptoms, but they have not been tested. The latest 24-hour increase in these possible cases has been 5,659.
In general, regardless of which calculation method is used, both Spanish and Catalan statistics have shown positive tendencies in recent days. Yet the data differences show just how much uncertainty still surrounds the epidemic, on a day when the Spanish prime minister has announced "cautious" plans to return the country to a "new normality" within "a maximum of eight weeks".
Below, graphs of Catalan health ministry statistics showing daily Covid-19 deaths (black), and daily new cases (confirmed, dark blue; possible; teal blue).