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Madrid’s beer gardens and restaurants are full. So full that it is difficult to find a free table in the historic center. Most of the guests sit at the table without a mask. “The party continues even during the pandemic”, headlines the Spanish newspaper “El País”.
While most European cities are currently tightening their measures, Madrid’s conservative mayor, José-Luis Martínez Almeida, even explicitly urges the capital’s 3.3 million inhabitants to “have a drink out”. The urgent appeal of the Spanish Minister of Health, the socialist Salvador Illa, to stay at home if possible to reduce the risk of contagion, remains unheard. How can it be?
Open gyms, cinemas and theaters
By the end of the summer, the Spanish metropolis had acquired the inglorious title of “crown capital of Europe”. Nowhere on the continent have more infections been recorded. With the result that the conservative prime minister of the capital region, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, was accused of failing to prepare the metropolis for the second wave of the crown.
“We cannot suffocate the economy,” Ayuso replied to his critics. He fought hard against the crown’s drastic restrictions on the population and traders. And this against all the requests of the Spanish government and epidemiologists, who have called for a more decisive approach until Christmas.
But Ayuso prevailed with his special approach: While freedoms are further restricted in most other Spanish regions on the mainland, Madrid’s stubborn regional president leaves the reins: inns and beer taverns can stay awake until midnight. Gyms, cinemas and theaters are also open.
The surprising thing is: however, officially registered infections have been decreasing since the end of September. So much so that the Spanish conservative press is already hailing the “miracle of Madrid”. And he cites the surprisingly large reduction in the number of cases as an example of the fact that Corona can be kept in check without rigid restrictions. “Our measures are working,” Ayuso says.
Epidemiologists doubt successful reports
But well-known Spanish epidemiologists have doubts about this successful report: they point out that official infection numbers have dropped since the day Ayuso ordered a change of strategy: after the Madrid health system was about to collapse, the complex PCR tests that they had been used until then have been increasingly replaced by less reliable rapid antigen tests. Furthermore, since then, contact persons of infected persons are no longer automatically tested.
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The connection between the change in strategy and the decline in registered cases is clear enough, says a spokesperson for the Spanish Association of Epidemiologists. “If you do fewer tests and if you do antigen tests instead of PCR tests, you find fewer cases.” So the “Miracle of Madrid” is just a statistical deception?
The hospitals
In fact, some data supports it. For example, most intensive care units in Madrid hospitals are nearly full, as they were in September. No “miracle” is even reflected in the death statistics: the number of confirmed deaths from Covid 19 has not decreased since September, but has increased.
The 14-day incidence in Madrid is currently over 300 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. The official rate of positive tests is just over seven percent, although there are a large number of unreported cases. According to the definition of the EU epidemic center, Madrid is still one of the high risk areas in Europe.
For an area to no longer be considered a “red zone”, the 14-day incidence would have to drop below 50 and the positive rate to below four percent. It will take some time before Real Madrid can expect a “miracle”.
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