SAHARANEWS – The government of Spain has announced the death of 849 people battling with Coronavirus in 24 hours.
The newly recorded death brings the total number of deaths in Spain to 8,189, the government said on Tuesday.
More so, another 9,222 people tested positive for the virus over the past 24 hours.
Spain now has a total number of 94,417 confirmed cases.
The new deaths in Spain take the worldwide total past 38,000, and the new cases make global figure close to 800,000.
More health workers are also getting sick amidst the shut down in the country.
On Monday, Al Jazeera reported that 12,298 health workers had now been infected by the virus.
Also, a Spanish daily El Pais published data indicating hospital intensive care units in eight of Spain’s 17 autonomous regions are already full to overflowing. There are also fears that any let-up in the pace of infections may come too late.
“This is arguably the most alarming news of all,” said Jose Hernandez, assistant professor of sociology and specialist in social health policies at the University of Cordoba.
“It indicates that either they don’t have the sufficient resources to fight it, or the measures to avoid contagions are not sufficiently enforced because the staff are so overloaded with cases.
“The health system is getting overwhelmed, and the ratio of staff per patient is far lower than is desirable. This will lead to an increasingly precarious health system because the staff working in areas like intensive care are specialized.”
A cure in sight?
WHO Executive Director, health emergencies, Mike Ryan, on Monday, said that data from ongoing research on drugs for the treatment of COVID-19 has shown some promising results.
He said some preliminary data from non-randomized studies has indicated that some drugs and some drug cocktails may have an impact on the virus.
Mr Ryan said the data are extremely preliminary and more research needs to be done to determine whether the treatments can reliably fight COVID-19.
While there is yet to be any proven effective therapeutic or drug against Covid-19, the WHO official said some drugs are showing prospects.
COVID-19
COVID-19 is a new virus affecting humans for the first time, as such there is limited knowledge on effective treatments.
Since the onset of the outbreak in Wuhan in December, several researchers have been experimenting on drugs with most efficacy to treat the virus.
Mr Ryan said during a press briefing on Monday that early research has shown that some drugs “may have an impact” on fighting the coronavirus, but the data are extremely preliminary and more research needs to be done.
He said some drugs “have shown promise in treating other coronaviruses, including SARS and MERS, that may be helpful in fighting COVID-19.
“Some of those drugs may impact the length of disease, some may impact the severity of disease and the dosages of those drugs when they’re given to what patient at what stage of the disease has not been standardized,” Mr Ryan said.
“We have never had a comparison group where we’ve had a randomized approach to treatment with the drug or not treatment with the drug.”
“So that we’re clear, there’s no proven effective therapeutic or drug against COVID-19,” he added.