Situation in Spain’s capital comes to a head: Madrid becomes the city of the dead

The corpses are piled up in the depots in the Spanish capital. More than 2,000 people have already died from the corona virus.

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Several vans drive one after the other into the underground car park of the Madrid Ice Sports Palace. In the cabin of the red vehicles you can see men in white protective suits. They are soldiers from the Spanish civil protection unit UME. They bring plastic sacks and coffins with epidemic victims.

“The corpses are piled up in hospitals and old people’s homes,” reports a union representative from the funeral industry. Due to the overcrowding of the depots, the Madrid Sports Palace with its Olympic ice track was converted into an interim storage facility – the largest mortuary in the nation.

Officially, the ice skating and shopping center in northeastern Madrid bears the name “Dreams”. Now this dream palace is becoming the symbol of Spain’s worst nightmare, which is far from over: The virus epidemic is spreading even faster in Spain than was the case in Italy. For this reason, Spain’s parliament decided to extend the national state of emergency including curfew to April 11.

Nearly 300 people are currently dying from the Sars-CoV-2 virus in the Greater Madrid area alone every day. The capital region, where almost seven million people live, is Spain’s most dangerous virus risk zone. More than half of all deaths in Spain where the virus is detected are registered in Madrid.

Infection number four to five times higher than specified

As of Thursday, the authorities only reported 17,200 infected people in the Madrid region. 2090 people have died so far – two thirds of the victims were older than 80. The statistical mortality rate in Madrid makes many residents freeze their blood: at least at first glance, it is, at least at first glance, significantly higher than in the Italian one Lombardy or the Chinese province of Hubei.

But the statistics are lagging: Spain’s corona statistics only count the serious infections that require hospitalization, which is estimated to be the case for only about 20 percent of those affected. Tens of thousands of suspected cases in which the patient had mild symptoms are not recorded.

A total of 56,200 cases of infection were reported for all of Spain on Thursday – around 8,600 more than on the previous day. The number of deaths across Spain rose to 4,100 – an increase of 660 deaths in 24 hours. Spain, like Italy, has now reported more deaths than was registered in China in recent weeks. Here, too, it applies that the official data are not comparable across the board – everything depends on the counting method, the number of tests carried out and also on the information policy. In the case of Spain, experts like microbiologist Gabriel Reina suspect that the true number of infections is at least four to five times higher than officially stated.

Meanwhile, there are more and more horror reports from Spanish old people’s homes, in which hundreds of residents have died in the wake of the epidemic in the past few days. In view of the drama in the retirement homes, the army has even intervened to inspect homes. The military found catastrophic conditions: for example, they discovered deceased seniors who had apparently been lying dead in their beds for a long time – including in an old people’s home in Madrid.

Hospitals lack the necessary equipment

Meanwhile, criticism of the authorities is increasing. They are accused of not having prepared the nursing and health sector sufficiently for the corona epidemic. Hospitals and old people’s homes have been complaining for weeks that there is a lack of protective equipment and test kits. Doctors and members of the nursing staff report that they have to put protective gowns out of rubbish bags and face masks out of scraps of fabric. That is irresponsible, complains the nurse Jorge Tera. “You can’t send the troops to war without weapons and bulletproof vests.”

A shortcoming with dramatic consequences: More and more hospital employees are becoming infected. According to the latest figures, 14 percent of all sufferers now belong to the healthcare industry. In addition, there is a high number of unreported cases because there is not even enough test material to check the medical personnel who are at the forefront of the fight against the virus.