Visits to primary care centers up 36% in a week due to Covid-19

Covid-19 is once again on the rise in Catalonia: 11,355 people sought medical assistance in primary care centers (CAPs) across Catalonia on Monday due to the virus, 36% more than exactly a week earlier when only 8,356 did.

This is the first time since late August, in the wake of the Delta-fueled fifth wave, that there are more than 10,000 visits to primary care centers per day.

When there are 15,000 patients or more per day, treating both Covid and non-Covid patients "becomes difficult," Ariadna Mas, the care director of the Catalan Health Institute (ICS), which manages 80% of Catalonia's primary care centers, told the Catalan News Agency.

For now, the ICS has asked CAPs to test people for the virus in makeshift facilities outside primary care centers in order to reduce the impact this may have on them, and they are also looking into setting up testing sites in certain areas.
According to Mas, CAPs are "prepared" to face the sixth wave of the pandemic in Catalonia, despite not yet knowing just how wide-reaching it will be.

In the past week, 119,404 PCRs and 68,001 antigen tests have been done in Catalonia, most of them in primary care centers.

Meanwhile, the 14-day coronavirus incidence rate is currently 165.26, while the outbreak risk, which is found by multiplying the average spread of the virus over the past seven days by the cumulative incidence over the past two weeks, is considered to be 'very high' at 223.