The fourth wave is already here. It was to be expected as soon as it was known that the British variant was already dominant in Catalonia and in most of Europe. Until now it seemed that we had been spared its virulence - more contagions, faster and in some cases more serious - but it was a mirage. Hospitals and frontline health workers are now preparing for a tough few weeks in which a considerable rise in the number of infections and hospital admissions is expected. These figures are not yet seen in the current indicators, which seem much better than weeks ago but are lagging behind a reality in which specialists already detect the meteoric rise, at first-wave levels, which the new variantis causing. In fact, we are facing this fourth wave with full ICUs after a 19% increase in just ten days, and with a high number of ward beds occupied by covid cases.

During this week Catalan hospitals begin to hospitalize less coronavirus patients. It is still a very slow decrease, which does not remove the danger of the always feared resurgence, but it does venture that the number of patients admitted to critical care units is about to change. "Between this weekend and early next week will reach the ICUs peak admissions" of this third wave, Enric Alvarez, a researcher at the Biocomsc group of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), predicts, who forecasts the future behavior of the pandemic from the analysis of health data.