Spain pushes EU to downgrade Covid to ‘flu-like’ status as fatality rate drops

Spain could become the first European country to downgrade Covid-19 to a ‘flu-like’ status, after seeing fatality rates drop.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said the situation in Spain “is not what we faced a year ago” and has pushed his EU counterparts to consider the possibility of treating coronavirus like the flu.

Mr Sánchez cited the country’s “exemplary” vaccine uptake as a reason for the change, adding it is time to “evaluate the evolution of Covid to an endemic illness”.

The change would mean lockdown measures and counting daily infections would be scrapped, with coronavirus instead tracked like cases of the flu.

Spain's health ministry has developed a system known as “sentinel” for monitoring Covid-19, which mirrors how flu outbreaks are tracked in the country.

Sentinel uses sample data from GPs to predict and respond to waves of disease rather than counting every recorded case with a test-and-trace system, according to Fortune.

The Prime Minister also suggested using “new instruments” to manage Covid-19, including the new antiviral pill Paxlovid from Pfizer.

The push to downgrade Covid-19 to flu-like status is expected to be met with resistance from both Germany and France where vaccine uptake remains low.

By comparison, more than 90% of Spain’s population over the age of 11 is now fully vaccinated, while 85% of people over 60 have had a booster dose.

The country has also seen its Covid-19 fatality rate fall to one per cent - a huge drop from the 13% at the height of the first wave when Spain recorded 1,000 deaths per day.