Virus surge sends younger patients to Spain’s hospitals as variant spreads
BARCELONA, Spain — Julio Miranda had never felt the threat of the coronavirus too close. With an appointment for his first COVID-19 jab scheduled for mid-July, the 48-yearold house painter was, like many in the vaccine-abundant developed world, eagerly awaiting the end of his personal pandemic worries.
Then a colleague fell ill last month, followed by his boss’ wife. Gradually, all but one of his five coworkers found themselves in bed. Miranda, who is from Chile, also started feeling stomach cramps. Soon, he was lying on the sofa, struggling to draw every breath.
“It’s only when the virus hits you that you take it much more seriously,” Miranda said this week from a hospital room overlooking Barcelona’s beachfront where he recovered after a week in intensive care, conscious but connected to a machine aiding his oxygen intake.
After a brief respite that brought medical activity back to pre-pandemic routines, managers at the Hospital del Mar in this northeastern city are facing a sharp surge in infections by, once again, rearranging staff shifts and moving patients around in their sprawling facilities.
The increase comes amid the advance of the delta variant of the coronavirus that spreads more easily. And it’s being driven mostly by younger, unvaccinated patients who require less ICU care but are turning in droves to health centers and emergency wards. If they reach the point of needing hospitalization, they typically spend longer in regular wards until they recover.
At this facility, the number of COVID-19 patients has gone from 8 to 35 in just two weeks. That is far from the hundreds that the hospital nursed at the height of previous surges. But it comes as a warning of what could await unless “drastic measures” are taken against the spread of the virus, according to Juan Pablo Horcajada, who coordinates all the COVID-19 activity there.
Although the vast majority of those infected don’t show symptoms, the speed of the surge can only be compared to that of the first surge in March 2020, Horcajada said. Most hospitalized patients don’t need much breathing support and get well enough with corticosteroids. But doctors are seeing people in their 20s and early 30s developing serious pneumonia.
In Spain, the young are largely socializing while unvaccinated because authorities have strictly prioritized the elderly and most vulnerable groups. As a result, 21 million — or half of the country’s adult population — are fully vaccinated, but fewer than 600,000 of those are younger than 30, according to the latest Health Ministry data.
“It is still too early to think that vaccination will be brought under control in a short space of time,” Horcajada said, adding that most of his patients became infected before they received their second vaccine dose.