Muricia’s Minister of Health, Manuel Villegas, warned this Wednesday that the number of coronavirus cases in Spain could continue to rise for at least three weeks, at which point the peak is expected to be reached.
The forecast is based on the information gained from Wuhan, the Chinese city where the first the virus first broke out.
At the beginning of the week, Villegas said that the containment measures would begin to take hold of the epidemic curve in ten days, but today, Wednesday, he changed his stance saying that the ascending phase will continue for about three weeks.
The Region must be prepared for this scenario, although “Fortunately Murcia does not have the situation of that we are seeing in many other communities.”
The Minister said that there is an “exponential” increase in cases, with a growth of 40% in just one day. According to data, which was updated at 9 p.m. Tuesday, 145 people have tested positive for Covid-19 to date in the community. 18 people remain hospitalised, and another five have been admitted to the ICU (three in Santa Lucía, one in Los Arcos and another in Morales Meseguer).
The rest are in home isolation with mild symptoms. The good news is that there is already at least one patient who has recovered.
There are also ten infected health workers, and more than one hundred remain in quarantine having been exposed to contagion. “We cannot under any circumstances allow ourselves to lower the level of compliance with the measures put in place, at any time,” stressed Villegas. The application of confinement must be “strict” and as soon as there is a confirmed case in a family unit, quarantine is mandatory for all its members, which means that attendance at work by any of them is prohibited.
