BBC: [2] Applause and cheering rings out every night in the huddled streets around 12 Octubre hospital in Madrid, hailing the 6,000 staff who work there as heroes.
[3] “We’re not heroes; we’re health workers,” insists Hernando Trujillo, a doctor tackling the coronavirus emergency in the working-class south of the capital.
[4] The hospital has capacity for 1,300 beds and, at the height of the Covid-19 epidemic, close to 1,000 were being used to treat coronavirus patients.
[5] “There was almost no transition. It was really quiet and then suddenly a mad rush. The collapse came in a day,” says Laura Andújar, a 37-year-old emergency nurse.
[6] Spain has seen more than 20,000 deaths and the Madrid region is at the heart of it: a capital city blighted by this virus.
[7] This city has seen 7,000 deaths, more than other European capitals.

The contagion spread at a remarkable rate through the densely populated city and its cluster of suburbs.

The real death toll could be considerably higher as Madrid’s regional government has revealed only 800 of 4,260 care home residents suspected of dying from Covid-19 were tested.