- There are concerns at the number of Madrilenians who have recently arrived in the Community in attempts to escape the Capital lockdown.
The Torrevieja University Hospital is currently treating 12 patients from coronavirus on it’s wards with one in Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
The number is significantly lower than that experienced during September it was treating about 25 patients on a daily average.
However, neither of the figures for the end of August and September, nor those being seen in early October, come close to the levels experienced by staff in the Torrevieja hospital during the first wave of the pandemic.
Between the end of March and during April, the hospital had more than sixty patients on its wards and a further twenty admitted in ICU – which had to double its capacity for several weeks.
At the peak, it was necessary to treat many additional patients at the Quirón private hospital on the outskirts of the city.
Torrevieja Hospital has more than 200 private rooms, each equipped with a single bed and a further fold down bed that can be used by relatives. Rooms can also be doubled up in exceptional situations. This was something that was necessary for the first time in 14 years during the first wave of the pandemic when it was decided to accommodate two patients in each of the ground floor rooms.
During that time, of course, relatives were not able to visit or to stay with these patients.
In the Torrevieja health area there have been 72 deaths from the virus since the pandemic began in March and 1,267 diagnosed cases. There have been 117 cases detected in the last 14 days. The health area officially serves a local population of about 160,000 residents across eleven municipalities: Torrevieja, Los Montesinos, Benijófar, Rojales, San Miguel de Salinas, Pilar de la Horadada, Guardamar, Orihuela, Formentera del Segura and Rojales.
In the Orihuela health department, which covers a further fifteen municipalities in the interior of Bajo Segura, 1,040 cases have been treated, more than 200 in the last 14 days. Deaths have been significantly lower, however, with 27 recorded since the start of the pandemic.
The concern now in both of the health authorities, is the large number of students, workers and retirees, who have once again flown from the capital, Madrid, prior to its lockdown.
On Friday evening the AVE trains from Madrid into Alicante and the Madrid flights into Alicante-Elche airport were all full as many, suitcase in hand, fled the capital with the aim of avoiding the closure This group joined those who also left the city during the morning taking advantage of the last hours of freedom of movement .
But it was not just those arriving by train and plane as many thousands more took to the road to flee the city hours before the start of the confinement.
However, the exodus, in the early hours of the afternoon, was much lower than that registered last March quite probably due to the fact that families with children could not leave their habitual residence as the youngsters are now back in school.
Meanwhile in Valencia, 650 residents of the Galileo Galilei residence hall, most of them students from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, are currently in isolation waiting for the results of PCR tests that were carried out throughout the day on Friday.
This is the first tracking of this size that has been organised in the Valencian educational field after the outbreak that affects both the residence, which is privately managed, and the university itself.
The current situation in the Valencian Community has seem Intensive Care Units (ICU) and hospital beds with coronavirus patients reduced by 10% in the last seven days with 45 fewer hospitalised than a week earlier. In the case of ICUs, there are 5 fewer patients.
The Department of Public Health has registered 590 new infections confirmed by PCR test in the Valencian Community. By province, there are 62 in Castellón, 184 in Alicante and 343 in the province of Valencia.
Hospitals currently have 402 people admitted : 65 in the province of Castellón, with 8 patients in ICU; 128 in the province of Alicante, 35 of them in the ICU; and 209 in the province of Valencia, 23 of them in ICU.
There have been a total of 5 deaths recorded since the last update.
