40% of Spain's Covid patients in hospital are admitted for other illnesses

40 per cent of the Covid patients in Spain’s hospitals have been admitted for other illnesses.

According to experts, caution should be taken when looking at Covid numbers as 40 per cent of the patients in Spain have actually been admitted to hospital for other illnesses.
Two weeks ago, the hospital occupation of the sixth wave exceeded the maximum records set by the previous two, according to the data offered every day by the Ministry of Health with information sent by the communities.
“A few months ago these patients were very few. They represented a small and insignificant number of the total admitted. But recently they have grown a lot as a result of the great increase in the incidence registered among the general population,” explained Virgina Fraile from the Spanish Society of Intensive, Critical Medicine and Coronary Units.
El Pais asked the autonomous communities and a dozen hospitals and specialists, and the data collected (although most have answered that they do not have precise information) reveal that between 25 per cent and 40 per cent of hospitalised patients are in this situation.
Julio Mayol, medical director of the Clinical Hospital of Madrid, explains that of the almost 100 patients they currently have who have tested positive when admitted to the centre, “two-thirds suffer from Covid and a third are being treated for other causes, although the virus may be related.”
At the Hospital del Mar in Barcelona, 60 per cent of the cases are admitted for acute Covid, while the remaining 40 per cent for different pathologies.
Jesus Rodriguez Baño, head of infectious diseases at the Virgen de la Macarena Hospital (Seville), places this percentage at 25 per cent. Santiago Moreno, who holds the same position at the Ramon y Cajal Hospital (Madrid), calculates that “approximately 30 per cent of cases are admitted with the virus but do not develop Covid.”
Spain does not offer data at a national level that distinguishes between those called hospitalised “with the virus” and “by the virus.”
The only community that has advanced any data has been Madrid, with Deputy Minister of Health Antonio Zapatero saying: “40 per cent of the patients who enter Madrid with a positive PCR do not do so due to covid.”
The Health Ministry and the communities have agreed from the beginning of the pandemic to share data that is comparable and allows the evolution of the pandemic to be followed.
Despite this, the answers offered by the autonomies do not coincide in all cases.
While some such as Andalucia, the Basque Country, Navarra and Murcia do not distinguish between patients hospitalised “for the virus” and “with the virus” in the data they send each day, others such as La Rioja and Extremadura ensure that they only include in the daily balance between those hospitalised and patients “who require assistance because of covid.”

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