Paper by Helena Legido-Quigley, José Tomás Mateos-García, Vanesa Regulez Campos, Montserrat Gea-Sánchez, Carles Muntaner and Martin McKee. The Lancet.
March 18, 2020.
Spain, with more than 11‚Äà000 cases and 491 deaths as of March 17, 2020, has one of the highest burdens of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) worldwide. In response, its government used a royal decree (463/2020) to declare a 15-day national emergency, starting on March 15.
Although the Spanish health system has coped well during the 6 weeks since its first case was diagnosed, it will be tested severely in the coming weeks as there is already widespread community transmission in the most affected regions, Madrid, the Basque Country, and Catalonia. The number of new cases in the country is increasing by more than 1000 each day. A crisis such as this places pressure on all building blocks of a health system, each of which is considered in turn.
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