Valencian Community enters ‘extremo’ level-4 alert as UCI occupancy hits 25% – will anything change?

The Valencian Community should be on maximum health alert according to Spain’s four-tier system – but no corresponding measures have been announced yet.

Critical COVID-19 patients are now taking up 28% of available intensive care (UCI) beds in the Valencian Community.

This pushes the region (Alicante, Valencia and Castellón) into the maximum ‘extremo‘ alert, according to Spain’s four-tier system.

The system sets thresholds of 5-10% for a region to find itself in level 1 ‘low’ risk; 10-15% for level 2 ‘medium’ risk; 15-25% for level 3 ‘high’ risk; and 25%+ for ‘extreme’ risk.

(Read more health criteria in our write-up here.)

So far, the Valencian government has not announced any new restrictions since the update last Friday. Read about those new measures here.

Figures

The 28% occupancy translates as 248 intensive care beds across the Valencian region of 5 million (0.00005%).

Occupied beds are up from 194 last week.

According to one of the Valencian region’s leading syndicate (CSIF), the UCIs at Vinarós, La Plana, Elda, General de Alicante, Orihuela, Torrevieja and Vinalopó are reaching ‘saturation’.

It also comes as the Valencian health department Sanitat announced 26 deaths over a 24-hour period yesterday – the highest figure since 16th April’s 43 deaths.

However, Spain’s four-tier alert system draws upon at least eight data points.

The main one, accumulated incidence (AI), remains in the level 3 ‘high’ risk category at 248 cases per 100,000 inhabitants over the last 14 days.

The Valencian Community’s AI over the last 7 days is as low as 90.35 cases per 100,000 inhabitants – a massive decrease. (Source.)

This AI over 7 days is the 2nd-lowest in all of Spain’s 17 autonomous communities. Only Canarias is lower, with 45 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

The highest is Ceuta with 541 cases per 100,000 inhabitants over the last 7 days.

Only five regions have a lower occupancy of UCI beds than the Valencian Community – the lowest being Canarias, with 10%, and the highest La Rioja with 57%.