Spain's Aragon Region Grapples With Coronavirus 'fire'

Zaragoza, Spain, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 12th Aug, 2020 ) :In Spain's Aragon region, one of Europe's worst-affected areas by the pandemic, health centres are packed and a field hospital is being set up as authorities scramble to control a surge in infections.

The spike in COVID-19 cases started with outbreaks in households in an impoverished working-class neighbourhood of Zaragoza, the capital of Aragon, said Jose Ramon Pano, an infectious disease specialist at the city's University Hospital Clinic.

"This is an environment that is conducive to transmission" of the disease, he added, citing cramped living conditions and the presence of a large number of immigrants who don't speak Spanish, as factors that favour infections.

These "initial sparks" were fanned at places that can aid the virus' "super-transmission", such as family gatherings, bars and nightclubs, he went on.

Then the "fire" spread to workplaces and retirement homes in the city of around 675,000 people, putting its healthcare system "under pressure," Pano said.

During the last seven days, the northeastern region, which is locked in on all sides by mountains, recorded Spain's highest infection rate -- 270 cases per 100,000 people -- as well as 32 deaths and 242 hospitalisations from the disease.

To help Aragon deal with the surge in cases, soldiers on Wednesday began assembling a 400-square-metre (4,300- square-foot) field hospital in the car park of a Zaragoza hospital.

Tourists are scarce at Zaragoza's famous domed basilica and the city's river aquarium, one of the world's largest, closed its doors again on July 27 to prevent infections after being open for a month and a half.

But the streets of Spain's fifth-largest city are far from empty.

In the working-class neighbourhood of Delicias, which has the city's highest infection rate, elderly couples could be seen taking a stroll and people sat in outdoor cafe terraces.

Some locals, however, such 74-year-old Dolores Valencia Gomez, said that they had been staying home out of fear for the virus.

"I only stepped out to get lottery tickets," she said.

While people waited outside shops, adhering to a limit on the number permitted inside at a time, queues formed at health centres.