Spain leaves the extreme risk of coronavirus and will address a new surveillance strategy

Spain has come out of the extreme risk of coronavirus transmission by dropping below 500 cases per 100,000 inhabitants (486), although the total number of deaths already exceeds 100,000. This scenario poses a change in the epidemiological surveillance strategy that will be analyzed on March 10 with the autonomous communities in Zaragoza.

The celebration of the Mobile Word Congress in Barcelona, ​​a reflection of the recovery of normality due to the pandemic. EFE/Enric Fontcuberta

The average number of infections in Spain reached the extreme or very high risk of coronavirus transmission on December 17 and continued to rise until reaching the peak of the sixth wave on Friday, January 21, with 3,418 cases per 100,000 inhabitants after the outbreak of the omicron variant.

After the meeting this afternoon of the Interterritorial Council of the National Health System, the Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, at a press conference, considered that Spain is “on the right track” and that for that reason the new scenarios must be analyzed epidemiological.

Thus, Darias has announced the holding on March 10 of a meeting in Zaragoza of the Government with the autonomous communities and epidemiological experts to address the global health surveillance strategy and the transition to a new model “jointly” throughout the national territory and in coordination with the European Union.

Asked if there has been a debate about eliminating the mandatory nature of masks indoors (it is no longer mandatory outdoors) and if the proposal to start by removing them in schools, as proposed by Catalonia and Andalusia, has been discussed, the minister has forwarded to the meeting on March 10 in Zaragoza.

“When we go together we advance further, we must work in a rhythmic manner to take firm steps forward”, he added.

The Ministry of Health has decided to change the periodicity, now from Monday to Friday, of the national epidemiological evolution reports. Thus, the vaccination report will be given one day a week from the next and the incidence, infections, deaths and hospital occupation will be issued two days a week from March 14.

The data

The cumulative incidence it has dropped 29 points since yesterday from 515 to 486 cases per 100,000.

Above this extreme risk of transmission of the virus are Galicia, the Canary Islands and Murcia with more than 700 cases; Catalonia and the Basque Country with more than 600 and with more than 500, Aragón, Asturias, Cantabria, Castilla y León, Extremadura and Navarra.

With less incidence: Melilla (246); Castilla-La Mancha (274), Andalusia (291) and Madrid (297).

By age bracketsthe group between 12 and 19 years old has the highest incidence (742), followed by those between 20 and 29 years old (620).

Health has reported 18,803 infections since yesterday, the lowest daily figure in recent weeks.

Since the start of the pandemic in Spain there are already 11,054,888 coronavirus infections on record.

The positivity rate of diagnostic tests it continues to fall to 17.06%, a few tenths less than yesterday.

Despite the decline in all indicators, the death toll remains high and, since records have been available since the start of the pandemic, 100,037 have been reached this Wednesday, after the 154 most reported since yesterday.

The ucis they are at 9.8% bed occupancy with 902 patients, although they are still at high risk (between 10% and 5%).

In Spanish hospitals, on the ward and ICU, there are 6,188 covid patients (4.9% occupancy) and in a low risk situation (from 5% to 2% of occupied beds).

Vaccines

In total there are 39,062,167 citizens91% of the population over 12 years of age, with the full course of the covid vaccine.

In addition, 24.1 million people have already received the booster dose, 50.9% of the general population.

57.5% of children between 5 and 11 years old (1.8 million out of 3.2 million) have received at least one dose and 19% already have the complete schedule since the campaign started on December 15 pediatric vaccination.

Spain offers 5,000 hospital beds to Ukraine

Spain has offered Ukraine, in the midst of the war over the invasion of Russia, 5,000 hospital beds in all the autonomous communities and medical supplies, medicines and respirators in coordination with the European Union.

The Spanish contribution exceeds that of the surrounding European countries in a gesture of “solidarity” with Ukraine in “times of difficulty and unity”, announced the Minister of Health.

Rights Groups Urge Crack Down on US Prison Surveillance Technology

Dozens of rights groups are demanding a crackdown on an artificial intelligence system used to eavesdrop on U.S. prisoners’ phone calls, after a Thomson Reuters Foundation investigation highlighted the risk of rights violations.

Documents from eight states showed prison and jail authorities were using surveillance software called Verus, which scans for key words and leverages Amazon’s voice-to-text transcription service, to monitor prisoners’ phone calls.

California-based LEO Technologies, which operates Verus, says it has scanned close to 300 million minutes of calls going in and out of prisons and jails in the United States, describing the tool as a way to fight crime and help keep inmates safe.

But a coalition of civil and digital rights groups said the surveillance sometimes overstepped legal limits by targeting conversations unrelated to the safety and security of detention facilities, or possible criminal activity.

“This surveillance infringes the rights of incarcerated Americans, many of whom have not been convicted and are still working on their defenses, as well as those of their families, friends, and loved ones,” the groups wrote in a joint letter.

Four different letters were sent to the attorney general’s office in New York State, the state’s Inspector General and the federal Department of Justice (DOJ).

The DOJ provided a $700,000 grant to the sheriff’s office in Suffolk County, New York, to implement a pilot of the AI-powered voice-to-text surveillance system in 2020.

Undersheriff Kevin Catalina, who helps run the Verus program in Suffolk, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that the system is crucial for alerting jail authorities to people who are suicidal and to identify gang members behind bars.

“It saves lives,” he said.

A DOJ official said the department is reviewing technology programs receiving federal funding to ensure they are enhancing public safety while respecting constitutional rights.

A spokesperson for the New York State Inspector General’s Office said in emailed comments that they would review the letter and “thoroughly investigate” complaints that are sent in.

More than 50 advocacy groups are part of the campaign, among them the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Worth Rises, the Innocence Project, and Access Now.

They also raised concerns about the prison phone call company Securus, and the possible recording of conversations protected by attorney-client privilege.

A Securus spokesperson said the company is committed to protecting civil liberties, that users can set attorney numbers to private – meaning calls are not recorded and cannot be monitored – and that they act immediately to delete “inadvertent” recordings.

A representative for LEO did not respond to requests for comment on the letters.

“It seems like the regulators have been asleep at the switch at the federal, state and local level,” said Albert Fox Cahn, head of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, which helped draft the letter.

‘Unproven, invasive, and biased’

As Suffolk County was trialing Verus, it also expanded beyond New York, winning state contracts in Georgia and Texas, and in local sheriff’s departments across the United States.

The rights groups urged regulators to block further expansion of surveillance tools in prisons and jails, saying they have the potential to produce racial bias and undermine privacy rights, without any clear track record of success.

In their letter addressed to the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, the groups cited research showing voice-to-text tools have a much higher error rate for Black voices. Black people are disproportionately represented among U.S. prisoners.

“Even absent discrimination, Verus and similar technologies exceed prisons and jails’ lawful surveillance powers,” they wrote.

Documents obtained by the Thomson Reuters Foundation from the pilot site in Suffolk County showed Verus was used to analyze more than 2.5 million calls between its launch in April 2019 and May 2020 – leading to 96 “actionable intelligence reports.”

While Catalina did not specify how many prisoners had been disciplined or faced charges based on those leads, he said the tool had helped prevent 86 suicides.

The rights groups also raised concerns about mission creep, noting the technology had been used to identify conversations that could flag problems for prison or jail administrators – such as complaints about their response to COVID-19.

Catalina said the sheriff’s office reviews all its surveillance strategies on a monthly basis to make sure that their terms used in the Verus system are appropriate, and that it has never found any issues.

The surveillance of detainees’ phone calls is especially troubling in county jails, where people are frequently held before being convicted of any crime, said Bianca Tylek, executive director of criminal justice nonprofit Worth Rises.

“People who are innocent, (who) have the presumption of innocence, who cannot afford bail … should not be subjected to surveillance that no one else is,” said Tylek.

Besides infringing the privacy of incarcerated people and their relatives, AI-powered surveillance in prisons and jails could also lead to increases in the cost of phone calls for prisoners, rights campaigners fear.

The average 15-minute phone call from a jail already costs $5.74, according to a 2019 report from the Prison Policy Initiative, while 2015 research found more than a third of families reported getting into debt to pay for calls or visits.

Worth Rises, which has been pushing to reduce the cost of prison phone calls across the country, is urging state and local law enforcement to offer calls for free.

Emails between LEO and sheriff’s offices, which were obtained through public records requests, show use of LEO’s Verus system could cost as much as 8 cents per minute.

They also give a picture of how the company worked in tandem with law enforcement officials to raise funds – enlisting PR personnel, helping draft federal grant proposals, and making appeals to lawmakers.

In Suffolk County, the Sheriff’s office discussed plans to pass the cost onto prisoners themselves if grant funding ran out, the emails reveal.

The office said that while it had considered passing along the costs to prisoners, they ultimately decided not to.

Tylek said the federal government should not be funding pilots involving systems like Verus, warning that authorities rarely relinquish surveillance powers once they have been granted.

“It (becomes) almost impossible to pull it out,” she said.

Health plans to change the surveillance model after the sixth wave

The Ministry of Health plans to change the current model of epidemiological surveillance, of control of the pandemic in Spain, once the sixth wave is overcome, which this week has entered a “gentle decline”. This has been stated by the head of the department, Carolina Darias, who has indicated that home quarantines due to covid will continue to be, for the time being, seven days.

The Minister of Health, Carolina Darias (l), together with the director of the Center for the Coordination of Health Alerts and Emergencies of the Ministry of Health, Fernando Simón (2l), during the meeting of the Interterritorial Council of the National Health System. EFE / Borja Puig De La Bellacasa / Pool Moncloa

After the meeting this afternoon of the Interterritorial Council of the National Health System, the Minister of Health highlighted at a press conference that a transition is opening towards “a new surveillance model” of the pandemic but “not before the end of the sixth wave Calmly and cautiously.”

The progressive change in the epidemiological situation, with more infections but mild in most cases due to both the characteristics of the omicron variant and the high vaccination rate, lead to the proposal of a new counting system in line with the experts and in national and international co-governance.

Darias has specified that the probability of hospitalization has been reduced 7 times in this wave compared to the third just a year ago, going from 6.5% to 0.9%, while ICU occupancy has dropped from 40 % to 22% current.

Asked about the approach of Castilla-La Mancha, Madrid, the Valencian Community and Galicia to reduce home quarantines due to covid from 7 to 4 or 5 days, the minister indicated that at the meeting only one counselor raised it as a possibility to study .

“This is an issue that is still immature, we must be very aware of the situation we are in,” he pointed out.

The current maximum capacity for sporting events is also maintained: 75% outdoors and 50% indoors.

New drop in incidence

The cumulative incidence at 14 days has dropped for the third day in a row, 73 points from yesterday to 3,194 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

“A slight decline in the last week after eleven consecutive weeks of growth,” the minister pointed out.

By age groups, the incidence is low in all groups except in those under 11 years of age, in the process of being vaccinated, with an incidence of 5,666 cases/100,000.

The Ministry of Health It has notified 133,553 more cases this Wednesday (114,877 yesterday), of which 52,034 have a diagnosis date of Tuesday and a cumulative of 9,529,320.

The positivity rate of diagnostic tests, 37.75%, continues to decline this week.

Deaths, 215 more

After the maximum of 382 deaths reported yesterday, a figure that had not been reached since February 2021 in the fall of the third wave, 215 more were added this Wednesday.

With a date of death in the last 7 days there are 757 deaths and 92,591 since there are records of deaths certified by tests in the pandemic in Spain. The global lethality is 1%.

decline in hospitals

The total number of patients admitted to hospitals (ward and ICU) is 18,805, 329 less than yesterday, 15.06% bed occupancy (15.47% yesterday).

In the ucis there are 2,152 covid patients, 52 less than yesterday, who occupy 22.74% of the beds after more than two weeks above 23%.

Catalonia continues to lead the occupation with 41%, while Aragon and Melilla are above 30%.

Spain has a notification of an omicron sublineage

Ómicron continues to gain space and occupies 86% of the sequenced samples; in our country and in the rest of the world, the minister explained; BA.1 is the dominant sublineage.

Spain has only one notification of the BA.1 sublineage, which is currently of concern in Denmark, Sweden and India and which the WHO has asked to monitor, counting on the time lag of between 2 and 3 weeks that exists and the sequencing that confirms it.

Regarding this sublineage, “the information we have from Denmark is that it does not seem, said with all caution, that it behaves very differently from BA.1”, although Health will be “very attentive” to its evolution, Darias has guaranteed. .

Active surveillance against infertility caused by uterine fibroids

Between 40% and 70% of women will suffer at some point in their lives “the benignity” of uterine fibroids, an abnormal growth of smooth muscle tissue that can cause, in some cases, infertility and sterility if it is localized in the endometrial wall, even more so at 30 and 40 years of age.

Active surveillance against the “perversity” of uterine fibroids

“They are more frequent in women who have not given birth, in those who have had very early menstruation or due to factors, let’s say, hereditary, possibly related to the hormonal system,” says Dr. Carmen Sala, an obstetrician and gynecologist and expert in quality of life of the woman of the Clinic Gine-3 of Barcelona.

If a woman bleeds between periods or her period is very heavy, sometimes with clots, or lasts longer than usual, or she has frequent urination or cramps or pain during periods or pressure in the lower abdomen, surely you will have developed one or multiple uterine fibroids in different pelvic locations.

“You have a uterine myoma -I inform the patient after carrying out the relevant diagnostic tests-… Of course! My mother had an operation for a fibroid… Oops! And you’ve seen my sister too -she comments-… Surely it is not genetic, but it is a kind of family physiological characteristic».

And it should be noted that approximately half of women will have a uterine fibroid around the age of fifty.

The determining location of uterine fibroids

Broadly speaking, uterine fibroids -fibromas- can be of an inappreciable size at a gynecological view or of a size that is frightening, giving very notorious cases of tumor masses greater than the weight of a newborn baby; but even so, the important thing is its pelvic location: in the intrauterine area –submucosos e intramurales– or in the ectopic area –subserosos-.

“Women with submucosal fibroids will have much more abundant periods and last for many more days. So much so that even the family doctor can detect anemia after seeing the hemoglobin data in an analysis of the patient, “says Dr. Sala.

“Submucous fibroids -intrauterine- can cause implantation failure during infertility treatments. As for sterility, as these fibroids occupy a space within the uterus, they can cause abortions, premature births or delays in fetal growth, ”he indicates.

“If the placenta inserts right into the pared endometrial where this type of fibroid has developed, the tumor can cause serious pathologies, such as placental abruption”, highlights the gynecologist.

Subserosal fibroids can reach very large sizes.

“They took one of four kilos from my mother”… a woman in the consultation told me. These fibroids frequently generate compression problems by resting on the bladder, making you want to pee more often, or on the rectal area, causing constipation”, he describes.

About the treatments, will depend on the woman’s age, location, size and symptoms (around 30% cause symptoms), but each fibroid will be treated specifically and individually.

“If the fibroid is a casual finding in a gynecological examination and does not produce symptoms, no treatment will be necessary, since they do not degenerate into malignancy,” he explains.

“If the woman is in the process of pregnancy and a submucosal fibroid is detected, selective surgical treatment will have to be applied to avoid serious problems, such as failure of the placenta to implant.”

Clarifies Dr. Sala Salmerón

Depending on the case, radiofrequency ablation of fibroids may also be used, which is performed vaginally through a suitable needle that applies heat inside the fibroid and necroses its tissue. Myoma reduces its volume and its symptoms.