The third wave of the pandemic has hit the province like a tsunami and most Mayors are debating between requesting the Health Department to close the perimeter, toughen restrictions to try to stop contagion or ask people to self-confine as the Mayor of Orihuela has done. The municipality, with a cumulative incidence of around 1,150 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, has adopted more restrictive measures which came into force last Thursday and will remain until 1st February. The Mayor, Emilio Bascuñana, has called for self-confinement of the population “so that wandering and sharing spaces are limited as much as possible. It is better that people do it of their own accord rather than moving to prohibitions,” he said. The City Council has agreed to suspend all outdoor activities of a sporting, festive and tourist nature organised by the council. Theatres and the auditorium, as well as capacity limitations in the María Moliner library and municipal museums have also been implemented. The measures also entail more police surveillance as well as the cleaning and disinfection of school spaces, sanitary areas, containers and outdoor places where there is a high concentration of people.
The Mayor announced the measures, which exclude the coast, through a video press conference. It was the first time that Emilio Bascuñana has appeared before the media this year and is already recovered, after having been confined for two weeks and being admitted a few hours to the hospital after catching the coronavirus. He has currently ruled out requesting the perimeter confinement of his municipality, as the neighbouring town of Callosa de Segura has requested, which maintains an incidence very similar to that of Orihuela above a thousand cases per 100,000 inhabitants.
The neighbouring Torrevieja Health Department, which includes Orihuela Costa, has seen Covid cases soar 38 percent with 681 positives in the last two weeks. The Torrevieja University Hospital has already restricted access to non-patients and has begun to use the individual rooms on floor 0, facilities that it hasn’t used since March exclusively for the hospitalization of covid patients. The management has had to halt the programming of surgeries that require an admission except for urgent ones while maintaining, for the moment, surgeries than can be carried out without admission.