Spain’s Medical Staff is the Least Protected, as They Now Make Up for 12% of All Positive Cases

Data indicates that medical staff in Spain are much more likely to get infected than the medical staff in China, Italy or South Korea.

Marta Noinde is a Doctor in Samur Hospital and the coordinator of the emergency room in Asturias, Spain. Although they still have capacity to take in new patients, she argues they “have very little resources. We are having to reuse masks and scrubs when they should be used once”. Every day a new co-worker is infected and has to take sick leave.

Noinde thinks that this will eventually happen to everyone in the emergency room of her hospital: “It doesn’t matter if you come into direct contact with the infected patients, because you will end up transmitting it anyway”.

She describes a reality that we have been hearing of repeatedly these last few weeks, but until recently we were unsure of what that looked like on paper with official stats: 12% of all infected patients. At this moment in time, there are more than 3,500 medical professionals who have contracted the coronavirus and this number is only expected to rise in the next week.

Figures show that the countries who are worse affected by the COVID-19 (Italy, China, the US, and South Korea – Iran doesn’t offer official statistics), the rate of infection between sanitary staff in Spain is much more superior than in other countries.