On Thursday, the minister of health, Salvador Illa, appeared before the Congress health committee in order to report on the situation with the pandemic.
He explained that since the state of alarm ended on June 21, there have been 527 outbreaks with 6,960 coronavirus cases. Of these, 412 remain active and have 4,870 cases, 60% of them in Aragon and Catalonia.
Illa insisted that there is a "different scenario" to that of March and April. Sixty per cent of cases have been confirmed as asymptomatic, thanks to contact-tracing and monitoring. In March and April, he added, the average age of people affected by coronavirus was 63. It is now 45 and has been down to 40 in the past five weeks. Outbreaks are occurring most frequently in social settings, such as family reunions and private parties, as well as with leisure activities. In 24% of cases, these have occurred in the workplace, especially in the fruit and vegetable sector. Nineteen per cent of cases are defined as "mixed", where transmission shifts from the family to other settings.
The minister went on to say that in seventy per cent of outbreaks there have been fewer than ten cases. These are "very small and very localised". The largest outbreaks have had up to 100 cases. These have occurred in social settings or have been situations where vulnerable workers have been affected.
Over the past week, an average of around 900 cases per day have been detected, with the accumulated incidence having reached 51 cases per 100,000 inhabitants during a fourteen-day period. From the date of the onset of symptoms, the ratio has been 17.5 cases per 100,000. There have been, Illa emphasised, "big differences" between regions.