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A first indicator depicting the changes that took place in hospitals was the increased availability of beds allotted to Intensive Care Units (ICUs), which is shown by regions on the map ''[[:File:Evolution in the number of ICU beds during the first wave of the pandemic|Evolution in the number of ICU beds during the first wave of the pandemic]]''. There were 150% more ICU beds (excluding newborns) towards the beginning of April 2020 than in January 2020 in the public and private healthcare systems –including both beds with and without respirators–. After the peak of the first wave of the pandemic, a decrease was registered in early June; even so, there were 78% more ICU beds occupied at the end of the first semester of 2020 than at the beginning of the year.
[[File:Logo Monografía.jpg|left|thumb|300px|Statistical graph: Mensajes en Messages on Twitter solidarios con el in solidarity with the provisional hospital de IFEMAat Madrid Trade Fair. 2020. España.]]
Some other actions were also taken in order to increase the capacity to accommodate the growing number of infected people requiring hospital admission, e.g. field hospitals were built and hotel beds were medicalised as presented on the map on ''[[:File:Beds in medicalised hotels during the first wave of the pandemic|Beds in medicalised hotels during the first wave of the pandemic]]'' pandemic that shows the results of this action, with a large amount of beds being made available in non-medical centres.
{{ANETextoEpigrafe|epigrafe=Operation BALMIS}}
[[File:Logo Monografía.jpg|right|thumb|300px|Illustration: Datos generales de la Operación General data on Operation BALMIS. 2020. España.]]
The intervention of the Armed Forces in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic under Operation Balmis was an example of the so-called ‘new missions’ of the Navy, the Army and the Air Force, as a key tool for solving all kinds of crisis. The missions allotted to the Armed Forces were set forth in Spanish Organic Law 5/2005 on National Defence, which states: “The Armed Forces, together with the National Institutions and the Public Administrations, must preserve the security and well-being of citizens in case of serious risk, catastrophe, calamity and other public needs, in accordance with current legislation.” However, the first time that the Armed Forces took on this task was under Operation Balmis, as part of the effort to defeat COVID-19 (except for interventions of the Military Emergency Unit and 43 Air Force Group as well as minor interventions by some other units in recent years). Operation Balmis, which involved over
