Real number of Spain’s coronavirus deaths difficult to know Health Ministry spokesman admits

THE real number of coronavirus deaths in Spain is going to be “difficult” to know, a Health Ministry spokesman admits.

Speaking at today’s press briefing, Health Alerts and Emergencies Coordination Centre director Fernando Simon explained that the Catalonia region has changed its way of calculating the figure for fatalities linked to Covid-19 to now include information provided by funeral homes, which has pushed up the total.

Simon said the ministry would be speaking to the Catalan health authorities as for the moment it had only been possible to look at information in a press statement to see whether tests for coronavirus had previously been carried out on the people included by the funeral parlours.

He clarified that the Covid-19 mortality data provided by the autonomous communities which the Health Ministry uses is persons who had tested positive for the virus.

“Not even having very good statistics will we be able to have a real figure for coronavirus deaths,” Simon commented.

“We are counting all the deaths where a test has been carried out and it is those which the autonomous communities notify us of,” he said.

Simon also warned that Spain is facing another week to 10 days of Covid-19 death numbers “higher than desired,” while the figures coming “are not at all what we would like to have.”