Valencian Community records 9 deaths in one day and 42 new infections in the Alicante province
The coronavirus pandemic continues to escalate in the Valencian Community, where nine people have died from the disease in the last few hours.
With yesterday’s 9 deaths the number of deaths now attributed to Covid-19 in the Community has risen to 13.
Meanwhile, the number of infections continues to increase and in the last few hours 107 new cases have been reported in the Valencian Community, 42 of them in the province of Alicante, putting the current figure at 193 cases.
Valencian Health Minister, Ana Barceló, said yesterday that twelve people have been discharged after overcoming the disease leaving the number of active cases in the Community at 490.
Amongst those cases are nine members of the anaesthesia team at the Alicante General Hospital who continue to recover from the disease while a further four more are in quarantine.
However, a number of suspicious cases have recently been declared among Alicante hospital staff, in services such as Surgery or Neurology.
Eleven workers from a factory where a man died of coronavirus last Friday also remain in quarantine. Personnel from this plant say that the patient was admitted to hospital last Monday with a respiratory infection, but tests were not carried out until Thursday. Neither were any protective measure taken among the workers who attended him.
Yesterday there were 12 patients admitted to the hospital, one of whom is a woman in her 50s and without underlying diseases, who remains in the ICU. Another 40 patients from Alicante General are still in home isolation.
In the General Hospital of Elche the number of positive cases among staff has increased to four and yesterday three people remained hospitalized, one of them a patient from Madrid.
Yesterday the Ministry of Health announced changes in protocols when testing for coronavirus, due to the shortage of both material and human resources.
From now on, testing will only be done for those hospitalised with respiratory infections and for healthcare workers who are diagnosed with acute respiratory infection, so people who have travelled to risk areas, or who have been in contact with confirmed cases of the disease and who present symptoms, will not be tested.
The Ministry is telling such individuals that they remain at home for at least two weeks and then visit their health centre doctor, who will indicate what medication or follow up action should be taken should the symptoms worsen.
Health says it assumes that a high percentage of the population is going to be infected, although most cases will be mild, so it is important to focus on the more serious cases.
As a result of the spread of the virus the province’s hospitals are taking measures to prevent new infections, especially among health personnel, and to have the largest number of beds available to take on new arrivals.
With outpatient consultations, attempts are being made to manage most of them by telephone, avoiding, as far as possible, the patient going to the hospital. Operations that are delayed with the aim of keeping empty beds are also being suspended. In the General Hospital of Alicante, this measure has allowed the Traumatology plant to be used to admit patients with suspected Covid-19 while the relevant tests are done. If they test positive, they are then moved to the Infectious area.
In health centres, patients are being called to try to resolve queries over the phone and only in truly necessary cases does the patient go to see a doctor.
Those treatments that expired this week and that need to be renewed will be automatically extended for two months and the treatments for chronic patients can be renewed by a phone call to the health centre, without the need to physically go to their referring doctor.
For those patients who require a hospital drug, there is the possibility of taking the drug either to their health centre, or to their home, or to be dispensed in any of the periodic consultations that they have scheduled.
However Medical Unions are still critical of the shortage of self-protection material against the coronavirus in the health centres of the province of Alicante. Masks, gel, glasses and individual protection suits are especially lacking to deal with possible cases.
Nationally, Spanish health authorities said that on Monday the number of coronavirus infections rose by 1,000 to 9,191 cases. The jump of 13% makes Spain the country with the second-highest number of new daily cases in the world.
With 9,191 infections, Spain has also overtaken South Korea to become the country with the fourth-highest number of coronavirus cases across the globe.
