ORIGINAL: obvert
The same article mentioned robotic testing, but said that was a ways off. I agree, it is shocking, and I can't see how it goes up that much in such a short period. Unless they're going door to door.
Spain is being.....less than forthright about testing. From Warspite's link in Post 1677 above, we learn that Germany credits aggressive testing (to include contact tracing) for their low mortality rates. So who are they testing, and what is the capacity?
"Crucially, Germany started testing people even with milder symptoms relatively early on, meaning the total number of confirmed cases may give a more accurate picture of the virus’s spread than in other states.
According to Germany’s National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, the country has capacity for about 12,000 Covid-19 tests per day".
Meanwhile what's been going on in Spain? Take a look at the chart below (#1 on the attachment) and you'll see the case growth in Spain. The initial enforced distancing measures didn't start until March 10th (just two days after 375,000 people gathered in Madrid for the International Women’s Day protest), and the government didn't declare the national state of emergency until March 14th. There was also an article just two days ago (can't find the link), in which the emergency council noted that only serious cases were being tested. In other words, there wasn't then and there isn't now the same type of contact tracing we saw in South Korea or what's being reported from Germany.
If you look at the "Ref" column on the Testing Wiki page, it contains links to the documents from which they obtained the testing numbers. In this case (see #2 on the attachment) "70" is the newspaper article containing the 355K total tests figure. There are some interesting quotes:
"At a press conference after the daily meeting of the coronavirus management committee, Sierra has reported a notable increase in recent days with regard to COVID-19 diagnoses after the Minister of Health, Salvador Illa, said days ago, that 30,000 had been made, a figure that the Government has clarified that at the time was "partial" and did not include all the data that was available so far. Since the state of alarm came into effect, cooperation between communities has improved and the 355,000 tests correspond to data offered by all hospitals. They are being carried out across the country at a daily rate of between 15,000 and 20,000 tests."
So 30,000 tests just "days ago" (as in THREE days ago - I have the screenshot and posted it here earlier) was only "partial", but has now blossomed into 355,000 because that's data from "all hospitals". And the national capacity is "a daily rate of between 15,000 and 20,000 tests". In other words, Spain has more testing capacity than Germany. OK then.
So let's see, at 20K/day (for the sake of argument we'll use the fantasy number) that would be 160,000 tests since the SOE was declared on March 14th. If we go back to the 10th, it would be 240,000. If we want 355K, that means max testing capacity running since....March 4th.
In other words, the same government that allowed a massive gathering in the capital on March 8th was also making sure that Spain was running at full Covid-19 testing capacity 4 days earlier and every day since. Sure. Totally believable.
; Julia Child
