Spain is preparing to endure another extreme summer. This Thursday, the Ministry of Health activated its preventive plan for high temperatures, which sets the thresholds from which excess heat triggers the risk to health and associated mortality.
Although the provincial thresholds from which high temperatures begin to have a negative impact on health are maintained, the novelty is that 182 meteohealth zones have been established.
Health defines them as homogeneous areas of territory from a climatological point of view in terms of the behavior of daily temperatures, of which there may be several in a single province. And we found significant differences. It is considered that there is a health risk from 26 degrees in Asturias and 41.5 in Córdoba.
The risk thresholds are not the same everywhere, but are established taking into account the great geographical variability of the territory, explains the ministry in the document published on its website.
Thus, it reserves the highest peaks for the Andalusian capitals: from 35.5 degrees in Almería and 37.2 in Malaga, to 40.5 in Seville and 41.4 in Córdoba. In Extremadura, 37.2 in Cáceres and 40 in Badajoz. For the Region of Murcia it is 38.8.
In Castilla-La Mancha, they range between 36 in Cuenca, 37.9 in Toledo and 38.1 in Ciudad Real. In Aragon, the maximum threshold is Zaragoza (38) compared to 36.7 in Teruel and 34.5 in Huesca. In Catalonia, Lleida has the highest value (37.9) and Barcelona the lowest (31).
Madrid activates it with 35.6 degrees. In Galicia, there is the greatest variability, with 27.5 in A Coruña but 37.4 in Ourense. Las Palmas, Balearic Islands, Ceuta and Melilla have a reference of 33. The lowest values ??are Cantabria (26.6) and Asturias (26.4).
The National Plan for Preventive Actions for the Effects of Excess Temperatures on Health of 2024 will be valid until September 30, although with the flexibility to extend it to October 15 if necessary. Health.
However, Health has brought forward its start from June to mid-May due to the increasingly frequent and prolonged episodes of extreme heat from these dates onwards.
Specialists remember that heat kills. For each degree that the ambient temperature exceeds these thresholds, the risk of mortality attributable to high temperatures increases between 9.1% and 10.7%, that is, for each day that there is an episode of extreme heat, mortality It increases, on average, by three deaths a day.
According to the Daily All-Cause Mortality Monitoring System (MOMO), between 2015 and 2023, there were 21,774 excess deaths attributable to high temperatures. In 2022, the record of 4,789 excess deaths was broken, followed by 2023 with 3,009 deaths.
