Spain's Sanchez suggests tracking pandemic differently as COVID lethality has fallen

FILE PHOTO: Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez speaks during a news conference, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, at Moncloa Palace, in Madrid, Spain December 29, 2021. REUTERS/Javier Barbancho

MADRID (Reuters) - The Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Monday it may be time to track the pandemic differently as COVID-19's lethality has fallen, confirming a report from El Pais newspaper that the government was mulling alternative monitoring methods.

"We have the conditions to gradually, with precaution, open the debate at a technical level and European level, to start evaluating the evolution of this disease with different parameters than we have until now," Sanchez said in an interview with radio station Cadena SER.

The Spanish government is considering changing how it tracks the pandemic's evolution to instead use a method similar to how it follows the flu, without recording every case and without testing all people presenting symptoms, El Pais reported on Monday.

(Reporting by Inti Landauro; editing by Clara-Laeila Laudette)