Costa Blanca’s Valencia Will Not Ask to Move to Phase 2 Next Monday Due to ‘Prudence’ and ‘Responsibility’

The Ministry of Health in Costa Blanca’s Valencia has rectified its decision and in the end,  it will not propose to move onto Phase 2 next Monday, due to ‘prudence and responsibility’ in protecting the health of residents.

Finally, the Valencian Community has decided that the entire province will remain in Phase 1 for an additional week. In the words of the Health Minister, Ana Barcelo, this decision has been adopted for “prudence and responsibility” as she considers that the Valencian Community is “not prepared to go to Phase 2.”

This decision will allow the three most populated districts, three of Valencia’s metropolitan areas, to comply with the two mandatory weeks that the Ministry of Health first stipulated as the reasonable and prudent period to verify that territories are progressing with the epidemic in a controlled manner.

However, this decision will also force the other 10 sanitary districts, who launched into Phase 1 a week before the rest of Valencia, to stay in Phase 1 for a total of three weeks instead of two. If the evolution of the pandemic is controlled and favourable, then the Valencian Community would begin Phase 2 after June 1.

This backtrack in the Ministry of Health’s proposal is due to a ‘slight increase’ in the ‘number of instantaneous basic reproduction’ which is the ‘average number of secondary cases that each infected person can infect within a time frame.’ According to the Ministry of Health, from May 13 to 19, this rate has gone up from 0.72 to 0.89.

To understand this figure in better terms, the peak number of reproduction in the Valencian Community was registered on March 14 at 7.69. On that same day the community went from ‘110 infections to 430 in one day’ and they ‘do not want this situation to reoccur’ explained the deputy director for Epidemiology at the Ministry of Health, Herme Vanaclocha.

Health officials want to wait a little longer to see ‘what has happened epidemiologically to justify this increase.’ According to Vanaclocha, “this increase has been registered with the passage of the 10 districts moving to Phase 1, so we believe it convenient to study the evolution that occurs with the remaining 14 districts now in Phase 1.”