bdmetronews Desk ॥ When the Trump administration said Sunday it was “beginning to see glimmers of progress” against the COVID-19 pandemic, one of those glimmers was in Spain, the country that has reported more coronavirus infections (140,000) than any other except the United States, and a fairly reliable leading indicator of what may happen in other countries in the coming weeks.
“As you can see from the hopeful signs in Italy and Spain — where we see, finally, new cases and deaths declining — it’s giving us hope of what our future could be,” Dr. Deborah Birx, a member of the coronavirus task force, said.
But that hope may have been at least somewhat premature, and Americans looking forward to an end to the social distancing orders that have crippled the economy may want to temper their optimism.
In the country where morgues are so packed with corpses that some crematoria have been unable to keep up — in Barcelona, those seeking to cremate remains may have to wait two years — Minister of Health Salvador Illa assured the public five days ago that the rate of new infections had peaked, while other officials believe it may soon peak — or, alternatively, has merely hit a ridge and may still go higher.
Death rates in Spain appeared to drop over the previous four days, but they rose again Tuesday, a statistical aberration, explained one official, resulting from insufficient data released over the weekend. The numbers of COVID-19 patients in intensive care units appear to have dropped, but then again Spain’s two biggest cities, both with the highest numbers of cases — Madrid and Barcelona — calculate those numbers differently.
