Spain reported Tuesday a one-day increase in 194 new diagnosed coronavirus infections from the previous day.
Remember: The Spanish Ministry of Health set up a new national system for reporting and monitoring coronavirus cases two weeks ago, resulting in a net recalculation of infections and deaths. The total figure for cumulative infections confirmed by PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) tests since the start of the pandemic is now over 236,000, according to ministry data.
What has changed: Under the new system, Spanish health authorities say infections are now calculated on the day they were diagnosed, not the day they were reported, which resulted in this week’s fluctuating numbers. Some Spanish media ironically call it “the data dance”.
In one example of the new report, an additional 35 new deaths were added to the data released on Tuesday, however, these deaths have occurred in the past week, according to the country’s ministry of health.
The latest death toll in Spain of at least 27,117 is lower than previously reported by the Ministry of Health. This is because the ministry recalculated the overall figure on Monday and nearly 2,000 deaths were suddenly removed from the count.
A senior Spanish health official, Dr. Fernando Simón, said on Monday that the cases withdrawn from the total have not been confirmed Covid-19 deaths and therefore do not meet the updated criteria of the Ministry of Health to be included in the total count.
Simón added that the purpose of the revised counting “is to assess the pace of the epidemic in the past seven days”, so that medical staff across the country can get more current data in real time.
The website of the Ministry of Health says that the discrepancy between the numbers previously reported and those reported now could persist for several days, following a “new strategy for diagnosis, monitoring and control of the transition phase of the Covid-19 pandemic” .
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