Spain Health System on the Brink of Collapse, Workers Warn

Spaniard health workers warned on Monday about a sanitary collapse in the coming weeks as the country faces a third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

RELATED:

Spain Reports Weekend Record of 84,287 New Coronavirus Cases

Authorities reported that the COVID-19 incidence in Spain stands at 492 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, with an increasing contagion rate in almost all autonomous communities. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been 2,176,089 cases and 52,878 deaths.

"Hospitalizations are beginning to increase significantly. We are not yet in the situation that we lived in the first wave, but we are beginning to be very afraid because there are 100, 150 new admissions every day. Hospitalizations in UVI are also increasing and, logically, we are all a little afraid of what may come in the future if we do not act quickly to cut this third wave of the pandemic," the secretary-general of health workers union Amyts, Julian Ezquerra, explained to Sputnik agency.

The unions have denounced the poor conditions they have to work under, including lack of protective equipment and staff shortage. "Here, there is still tremendous job insecurity in the health sector. In Madrid specifically, 40-42% of hospital professionals are not permanent, 90% of hospital emergency personnel among doctors is not permanent, they are subject to temporary contracts, temporary, that does not stop being an added pain to the situation," Ezquerra.