Corona Virus
A series of write ups on the virus

Coronavirus Tracking,  Data Manipulation.  Spain.

05/06/2020

Spain was showing a steady decline in deaths up until 16th May. Up until then the deaths were reducing at around 5% per day and daily deaths were around 120.  At that rate we would expect death rates to have declined steadily to around 45 per day as of today.

Instead the death rates, after a flurry of changes are now showing an average of 2 per day making Spain the lowest death rate in Europe. 

Fig 1 below shows the published death rates, the ones which go off scale are way off scale (+688 and -1,915 respectively).

Fig 2 shows how the published death rate per million population has dropped to the lowest in Europe.

Spain has apparently reduced death rates from 120 per day to 2 per day in two weeks.

A miracle

Fig 1. Spain Covid 19 Published Deaths.

Fig 2 Death rates in Spain compared to other countries.

Update from El Pais 12-June

Since May 11, when the Health Ministry changed the method for collecting data, the historical series on the number of Covid-19 fatalities has been updated at a very slow pace. Although authorities reported 32 deaths in the past week, just nine fatalities have been added to the official toll in the past month.

Health authorities changed the way they present the total number of victims, so that fatalities are ordered according to the date of death, and not the date of notification. There are thousands of deaths that are yet to be assigned to a specific date, and that are in a kind of limbo.

32 deaths in one week as reported in El Pais is much worse than official figures but, as a proportion of the population (this works out as under 1 per million), still far better than any other country in Europe.

UPDATE 21st June

Spain has now released updated figures which show that the virus is all but beaten in Spain.

From the worldometers site, here is the new record of Spains death rate.

So Spain has reduced its death rate to around 4% of what it was a month ago. That is about five times better than Italy, or France, or Germany if the figures can be believed.

Spain is also opening up to tourists.  Until believable figures are produced I'm not going.