The fight against the epidemic in Spain: miracle or mirage?

In front of the assembly of the Swan Lake by French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj, Madrid spectators are all the more won over, in April, since ballet was not initially on the program for the 2021 Canal Theaters season. “The director, Blanca Li, called me after a withdrawal: it is a great pleasure for us to go back on stage, for the first time since October, explain to World Mr. Preljocaj, who has seen one after the other canceled performances at the Lyon Biennale, Vienna or the Palais de Chaillot, due to the pandemic. I have the impression that, rather than waiting for the end of the pandemic, the key word here is to really try to live with the virus ”.

Open theaters, restaurants too, curfew at 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. depending on the region, schools that have never closed since September 2020, and an incidence rate of 112 cases per 100,000 inhabitants over the last seven days – one of the lowest in Europe. Spain knows a miracle, as the Italian newspaper headlined Corriere della Sera, April 9: “The miracle of Madrid, it does not close and has fewer victims than Milan”? Or is it rather a mirage?

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Probably neither. Or a bit of both. The country knows what the director of the Health Alert Control Center, Fernando Simon, called “Small wave”, associated with the relaxation of the population during the Easter weekend at the end of March, and already, it seems, in a stabilization phase. For epidemiologists, this was undoubtedly slowed down by the restrictions, in force since January, which prevent in particular travel between regions and meetings in private homes, but especially by the progress of vaccination (23% of the population received at least one dose, and 8.5% two doses), and by the collective immunity acquired during the previous waves – since this “minivague” is here, already, the fourth. “We see the light at the end of the tunnel”, assured Mr. Simon, on April 27, saying to himself ” optimistic “.

Earlier third wave

With nearly 78,000 deaths from Covid officially recorded since the start of the pandemic, an excess mortality estimated at 90,000 deaths, and another 117 deaths recorded on April 27, Spain, a country of 47 million inhabitants, has suffered hard whip up the pandemic. And if it is now experiencing more respite than its neighbors, it is probably also because the country has already had a third wave, earlier.

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