The elderly residences in the Girona regions reported in 2025 a total of 11 scabies outbreaks with 171 people affected, a figure that places this territory with the highest average in Catalonia per episode declared in nursing homes. The average was 15.5 affected per outbreak, well above the Catalan average, which stood at 8.
The year's balance across Catalonia leaves 154 scabies outbreaks in elderly residences and 1,229 affected. Of that total, 1,000 were residents, 218 workers, and 11 family members. Girona concentrated 7.1% of the outbreaks detected in Catalan geriatric centers and 13.9% of the total affected people.
Girona leads the average of affected per each outbreak
The most striking figure in the Girona regions was not so much the absolute number of episodes as their impact within the centers. With 15.5 affected on average per outbreak, Girona was above the rest of the Catalan health areas. Only Lleida, with 10.4, and Central Catalonia, with 10.2, approached that level. Tarragona registered an average of 7.8 and Barcelona South Zone of 7.1.
In absolute numbers, the area with the most outbreaks and most affected in residences during 2025 was Barcelona South Zone, with 38 episodes and 271 affected people. Vallès Occidental and Oriental added 23 outbreaks and 186 affected, while Tarragona closed the year with 21 outbreaks and 164 affected.
The city of Barcelona registered 26 outbreaks and 115 affected in residences, with an average of 4.4 people per episode, one of the lowest on the Catalan map.
October was the month with the highest incidence
The monthly evolution of 2025 reflected a clear rebound in autumn. October was the month with the most incidence in Catalan residences, with 26 outbreaks and 272 affected. January also started with high figures, by registering 15 outbreaks and 172 cases.
The trend is framed within a broader increase of this disease in recent years. The Carlos III Health Institute warned at the end of 2025 that the annual incidence of scabies in Spanish primary care has multiplied almost by 50 between 2011 and 2023, going from 131 cases per million inhabitants to more than 6,300. The body also placed the coastal areas of northern Spain among the areas where the increase has been most intense.
The residences, the area with the most outbreaks in Catalonia
The accumulated series in Catalonia already pointed to this pressure in geriatric centers. A report from the Agència de Salut Pública de Catalunya states that between 2015 and 2022, 647 scabies outbreaks were reported with 4,143 affected. The series' maximum was reached in 2022, with 206 outbreaks.
That same report places geriatric residences as the area with the most episodes and most affected people between 2015 and 2022. In that period, 179 outbreaks were registered in these centers, 27.7% of the total, and 1,685 cases, 40.7%.
Health strengthens protocols and isolation in the centers
The Department of Health reminds that scabies is transmitted mainly by direct and prolonged skin contact, or through recently contaminated clothing and sheets. It also points out that residences, social and health centers and other closed institutions are the environments where outbreaks occur most frequently.
In Catalonia, isolated cases are not reported, but it is mandatory to communicate suspicions of an outbreak to the Epidemiological Surveillance Network when two or more related cases appear in time and space. Every notified person must maintain strict isolation until 24 hours after starting treatment, a measure that can be extended in outbreak situations or in cases of crusted scabies.
Health and Social Rights reinforced in 2025 training in the sector with specific instructions on diagnosis, isolation, treatment, sectorization, and follow-up. Centers, furthermore, are obliged to have internal protocols, identify close contacts, and activate protection and cleaning measures to contain transmission.