Coronavirus: How likely am I to catch Covid-19?
As of Monday lunchtime, Spain had registered a total of 33,089 coronavirus cases, with the country's death toll standing at 2,182.
Coronavirus cases still haven’t reached their peak in Spain and “the worst is yet to come”, warned the country’s prime minster, Pedro Sánchez, on Saturday evening. Covid-19 is a disease that manifests itself in different ways, with its symptoms ranging from the minor to the serious. In Spain, there have so far been a total of 33,089 positive tests, leading to a death toll of 2,182.
Coronavirus has transmissibility rate of 1.4 to 2.5
The likelihood of catching the coronavirus depends from person to person; for example, if you follow government and health-authority advice not to leave the house, you will avoid close contact with others and, as a result, will be less exposed to the possibility of infection, which takes place via the nose, eyes or mouth.
According to the World Health Organization, however, Covid-19 has a transmissibility of “between 1.4 to and 2.5” - although it is thought that the top end of this scale may turn out to be as a high as 3. This figure represents the number of people to whom a person carrying the coronavirus can be expected to directly spread it.
As this is a new virus, the statistics on it are still at a formative stage; only after the pandemic has subsided will it be possible to assess its virulence with greater certainty. To put things into approximate context, though, common flu has a transmissibility of 1.3, meaning that the coronavirus is around twice as contagious.
Covid-19 has affected 0.07% of Spain's population - officially
Spain has almost 47 million inhabitants, so as the official figures currently stand, the coronavirus has only affected about 0.07% of the population. However, the problem with this percentage is that many people in the country have not been tested, particularly in Madrid.
Indeed, the capital’s mortality rate of roughly 10% of all its Covid-19 sufferers - far higher than in China and the rest of Europe, where it is 4% and 0.7%, respectively - is indicative of a large amount of undetected cases.