He had said it himself, a matter of hours earlier: "The real death toll is very difficult to know". Fernando Simón, head of the Spanish government's health emergency technical team recognized the problem, and now, to try and improve the calculation, Spain's health ministry has ordered a change of criteria in its coronavirus data gathering, incorporating not only hospital deaths but also fatalities that take place elsewhere: senior citizens' residences and people's homes, with one condition: that they had previously been tested for Covid-19. The alterations to the model were reported last night to Spain's autonomous communities, which run the country's decentralized health system, and were published in the official government gazette this morning. This has meant that some regions have not yet implemented it. Consequence: the data released by the ministry today is not all compatible. In particular, the ministry points a finger at Catalonia.
This Friday's statistical report indicates that the total number of coronavirus deaths in the Spanish state is 19,478. If you compare this figure with that of yesterday (19,130) it appears that, in 24 hours, 348 people have died. But the calculation made by the Spanish government is different. The health emergency technical committee says that 585 people died between yesterday and today. And it acknowledges that the numbers are frustrating because they have not yet been able to standardise the calculation system across all parts of Spain. Fernando Simón spoke of a "discrepancy" with one autonomous community - it was Catalonia - and said that in the coming days "the data series would be corrected" to try to make the data as homogeneous as possible.
According to the official data from the ministry, between Wednesday and Thursday the number of deaths increased by 551. Focusing on this figure in absolute terms, it shows another small rise in the daily deaths with respect to the previous day (presumably - unless that figure is also revised). In any case, if during the first week of Spain's state of alarm, deaths rose at a rate of 38%, they now do so with percentages in the order of 3%.
Likewise, for the number of people infected: despite the ambiguity which also surrounds this figure (since increased testing is likely to carry on revealing new Covid-19 cases), the absolute numbers provided at present suggest a stabilization - at around 5,000 new cases daily - compared to the times a few weeks ago when a greater number of new cases were detected with every successive day, despite a lack of broad testing. In the last 24 hours, 5,252 new cases have been confirmed. The total number of people infected with the coronavirus in Spain thus stands at 188,068 according to the health ministry.
All-clears, also up in the air
Until now, the statistics have shown that the number of people listed as "recovered" is around four times the figure for those who die. However, the correction in the counting method has also upset the balance between the number of medical all-clears given and the other figures. Today, the number of patients who have recovered in Spain since the onset of the pandemic was listed as 72,963. But yesterday it was 74,797 - almost 2,000 fewer. The ministry, however, talks about 3,502 more recovered patients between Thursday and today.
Simón justified the confusion of numbers by saying that "one autonomous community offered two sources of information and in recent days there were discrepancies about which of the two series was to be used".
Below, the breakdown by autonomous communities of confirmed cases (one of the few statistics which seems unlikely to be revised):
Catalan system measures 479 new deaths in total
Meanwhile the latest figures announced by the Catalan health ministry on Thursday night - which presumably were the source of the Spanish authorities’ upset this morning - counted a figure of 479 deaths in Catalonia in the last 24 hours, increasing the total number from the beginning of the epidemic to 7,576 deaths, based on its cross-checking process between the health service and funeral companies. This figure is well above the average number of deaths per day in the last week, which was around 100.
Of the total deaths to date in Catalonia, 4,056 have died in hospitals, 2,015 in residences, 84 in social care centres and 478 at home. The remaining cases are described as non-classifiable due to lack of information. It should be borne in mind that some of these deaths - even if caused by Covid-19 - would be excluded from the Spanish statistics under the differing criteria used, at least up until now.
The numbers of new confirmed infections in Catalonia has dropped dramatically, according to the health ministry in Barcelona: 361 confirmed new cases, down from 2,870 yesterday. This brings the total to 39,736 confirmed cases in Catalonia, of whom 5,966 are healthcare professionals.
However, the number of possible cases - those with symptoms but who have not been tested, a new category only listed in the data for the last two days - has increased by 3,738 people and now stands at 59,195 since the epidemic began.