A viral case of deja vu grips Spain
For many facing 2nd wave of coronavirus, it’s ‘here we go again’
MALAGA, Spain — At midday on a recent Sunday, there were 31 patients inside the main coronavirus treatment center in Malaga, the city with the fastestrising infection rate in southern Spain. At 12.15 p.m., the 32nd arrived in an ambulance. A half-hour later came No. 33.
The garbage can by the door overflowed with masks and blue surgical gloves. Relatives hovered in silence outside — one of them in tears, another feeling a pang of deja-vu.
“My brother-in-law had the virus in the spring,” said Julia Bautista, 58, a retired office administrator waiting for news of her 91-year-old father.
“Here we go again,” she added.
If Italy was the harbinger of the first wave of Europe’s coronavirus pandemic in February, Spain is the portent of its second.
France is also surging, as are parts of Eastern Europe, and cases are ticking up in Germany, Greece, Italy and Belgium, too, but in the past week, Spain has recorded the most new cases on the continent by far — more than 53,000. With 114 new infections per 100,000 people in that time, the virus is spreading faster in Spain than in the United States, more than twice as fast as in France, about eight times the rate in Italy and Britain, and 10 times the pace in Germany.
Spain was already one of the hardest-hit countries in Europe, and now has nearly 500,000 cases and more than 29,400 deaths. But after one of the world’s most stringent lockdowns, which did check the virus’s spread, it enjoyed one of the most rapid reopenings. The return of nightlife and group activities — far faster than most of its European neighbors — has contributed to the epidemic’s resurgence.
Now, as other Europeans mull how to restart their economies while still protecting human life, the Spanish have become an early bellwether for how a second wave might happen, how hard it might hit and how it could be contained.
“Perhaps Spain is the canary in the coal mine,” said Antoni Trilla, an epidemiologist at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, a research group. “Many countries may follow us — but hopefully not at the same speed or with the same number of cases that we are facing.”
To be sure, doctors and politicians are not as terrified by Spain’s second wave as they were by its first. The mortality rate is roughly half the rate from the height of the crisis — falling to 6.6% from the 12% peak in May.
The median age of sufferers has dropped to around 37 from 60. Asymptomatic cases account for more than 50% of positive results, which is partly due to a fourfold rise in testing. And the health institutions feel much better prepared.
“We have experience now,” said Dr. María del Mar Vázquez, the medical director of the hospital in Málaga where Bautista’s father was being treated.
“We have a much bigger stock of equipment, we have protocols in place, we are more prepared,” Vázquez said. “The hospitals will be full — but we are ready.”
Yet part of the hospital is still a building site — contractors have yet to finish a renovation of the wing of the hospital that deals with coronavirus patients. No one expected the second wave for at least another month.
And epidemiologists aren’t certain why it arrived so soon.
Explanations include a rise in large family gatherings; the return of tourism in cities like Malaga; the decision to return responsibility for combating the virus to local authorities at the end of the nationwide lockdown, and a lack of adequate housing and health care for migrants.
The surge has also been blamed on the revival of nightlife, which was reinstated earlier and with looser restrictions than in many other parts of Europe.
For several weeks in places like Malaga, nightclubs and discos were allowed to open until as late as 5 a.m., as politicians attempted to revive an economy dependent on tourists and partygoers. Revelers were allowed only to dance around a table with friends, rather than mixing with strangers — but the rules were not always observed.
In one incident in August, a performer was filmed spitting at dancers on a dance floor at a club outside Malaga. The venue was quickly closed, all nightclubs were ordered to shut two weeks later, and bars must now shut by 1 a.m.
But critics fear the restrictions are still too lax.
As beds continued to fill up in Malaga’s hospitals, residents were still cramming into bars along certain beach fronts until well past midnight. In some bars, the tables were tightly packed together — far closer than the current rules of about 6 feet allow.
At closing time, drinkers spilled out onto the beaches and pontoons, mostly without wearing masks. There they congregated in groups of more than 20 — a normal sight during any other Spanish summer, but far larger than the gatherings of 10 or fewer now allowed by law.
Some were teenagers who said they had recently recovered from a mild form of the virus, and who now therefore considered themselves immune. Others felt the restrictions were an overreaction.
“I don’t think COVID is real,” said Victor Bermúdez, 23, a shop assistant. “Well, yes, it’s real — but it’s not as serious as they say. It’s all a plan to kill the poor and boost the rich.”