Last Wednesday Spain broke through the unenviable barrier of one million cases of Coronavirus reaching 1,005,295 cases just eight and a half months after registering the first positive on 31 January, a German tourist who was on holiday in the Canary Islands.
In so doing the country became the first western European country to pass that landmark figure.
It is almost certain, however, that the reality exceeds the official data and there are far more than just the million infections declared in the official figures.
During the first wave, until the end of the state of alarm, 246,504 diagnoses were recorded, but the ENE-Covid study that was carried out by the Carlos III Health Institute estimated that at least 5.2% of the Spanish population had contact with the virus, about 2.5 million people.
In the second wave, 750,000 have since been diagnosed, but the Ministry of Health itself recognises that only between 60% and 80% of the total are being detected.
Thus, the real number of infections may be at least 3.5 million, although many experts believe that figure too falls short and it may be around 5 million.
