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Monday was the first day in more than two and a half months that Spain did not register any new deaths from coronavirus, according to data from the Spanish health ministry. The remission of the pandemic seems to be consolidating - although whether it's because of the success of Spain's lockdown and phased return to normality, or due to the arrival of the summer heat, is unknown. There have not been any deaths reported by the Spanish ministry for this Tuesday either. However, the accumulated volume of fatalities in this period of almost three months is sobering: 27,127. And the uncertainties that continue in the different statistics issued in Spain are, at the very least, reason for continued caution.

Since the beginning of last week, Spanish health authorities have issued Covid-19 fatality statistics that emphasise the weekly total of deaths, rather than the numbers for each day. In the last seven days, there have been 34 deaths from Covid-19 across the Spanish state - according to the health authorities in Madrid. Catalonia, with nine deaths, is the autonomous community that has reported the most deaths. It is followed by Castilla y León with 6, Extremadura with 5 and the Valencian Country with 3.

If we look at the infections, in this case there is an increase over the figures released yesterday by the ministry. On Monday there were 71 new confirmed cases of coronavirus in the last 24 hours; today there are 137. As for hospitalizations, the latest data states that there are 11 people in ICU who were admittted in the last seven days - two more than the weekly total reported yesterday. In Catalonia, no new Covid patients have been admitted to critical care for a week, according to the ministry.

The full picture?

Number of daily new Covid-19 cases in Spain, according to the Spanish health ministry. 

Despite the favourable trends in the data that arrives day by day from the ministry in Madrid, other indicators must also be taken into account. The first is that the numbers of the Spanish ministry are still out of line with those provided every day by some regional governments. One need look no further than Catalonia - but the same pattern of discrepancies can be found with territories such as Madrid, the Basque Country and the Balearic Islands. The difference is explained by the divergence of criteria in data counts. The Spanish government only counts positive cases and deaths which have been given a PCR test confirming the presence of the virus. 

The other issue that must also be taken into account is that while mortality is a key factor in measuring the impact of the pandemic, the fact that there are still new positive cases being confirmed means that, even if they are not very numerous and apparently subject to rapid isolation and tracing, the virus is still out there. And the period of two to three weeks between infection, detection, and, in the worst case, death, means that the picture we are getting from the statistics is already out of date.

Thus, certainty about the full remission of the pandemic in Spain is still far off. We await lockdown to be fully lifted, phase by phase (ending the process at the earliest, in the first week of July, in Barcelona), and even then, in the best of all possible cases, an absence of new infections for further weeks would be required as confirmation. Patience, already severely stretched, is going to be further tested.

Total accumulated cases Covid-19 confirmed, breakdown by Spanish autonomous communities