The need for detailed COVID-19 data in Spain
Sergi Trias‐Llimós, Ainhoa Alustiza, Clara Prats, Aurelio Tobı́as, Tim Riffe
Abstract
The COVID-19 epidemic has impacted the population of Spain far more than most feared or projected. As of Sept 25, 2020, more than 700 000 individuals had tested positive, and more than 31 000 deaths with a positive test had been recorded.1 Earlier in this pandemic, the Spanish Ministry of Health provided data by age and sex for the whole country in its daily COVID-19 situation updates (in Adobe PDF format), as well as daily data on total hospitalisations, intensive care unit admissions, discharges, and deaths by region. However, since May 19, 2020, disaggregated data have not been provided in the daily updates.1 In recent months, data improvements have been made by the National Centre of Epidemiology (CNE), and open data on total counts by region are updated and revised daily.2 However, at the time of writing, age-specific data from the CNE is given only in weekly publications (as Adobe PDF files), without geographic detail or retrospective corrections, and with cumulative counts tabulated only from mid-May onwards. Therefore, properly merging age-specific time series after the first wave is difficult or impossible.