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The impact of the first wave of the pandemic amongst healthcare professionals was very high, i.e. one in five cases were healthcare workers. Also, a large part of this impact fell on women, as the group of healthcare professionals is largely female. These noteworthy data could be linked to the difficulties in supplying personal protective equipment at the beginning of the pandemic, the initial lack of knowledge on how the virus itself behaved and the easier access to diagnosis for healthcare professionals. The peak time of infection amongst healthcare professionals was in March. The figures showing the number of healthcare workers infected during the first wave of the pandemic were high, i.e. 15,344 cases in the province of Madrid, 3,354 in the province of Barcelona, around 2,000 in the province of Biscay (Bizkaia), and 1,000 in the provinces of Valencia and Ciudad Real. In proportional terms (infected healthcare workers compared to the total number of cases), provinces such as Biscay (Bizkaia), Álava, Cuenca and Granada (between 20 and 25%) were more than 5 percentage points higher than the national average (15.3%), and some others, like Asturias, Tarragona, Guadalajara and Santa Cruz de Teneriffe (Santa Cruz de Tenerife), were even higher than 25%.
The provinces with the highest hospital admission rates due to COVID-19 (hospital admissions due to COVID-19 per 100,000 inhabitants) during these months were Madrid, Ciudad Real, Albacete, Soria and Segovia. This pattern matches well the distribution of cumulative incidence as the figures (between 500 and 800) were double that of the national average (232.8). The rest of the provinces of Castile and León (Castilla y León), Castile-La Mancha (Castilla-La Mancha), as well as Biscay (Bizkaia), Álava, Navarre (Navarra) and La Rioja also registered higher figures than the national average. On the other hand, these rates were lower in the coastal provinces of the North-West and South. In absolute figures, almost 40,000 hospital admissions were reached in the province of Madrid, 18,000 in Barcelona and around 3,000 in Biscay (Bizkaia), Valencia and Ciudad Real.
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