Covid 19 coronavirus: Spain orders a nationwide curfew to stop the outbreak from worsening

Faced with the resurgence of the coronavirus in Europe, the Spanish government declared on Sunday a state of national emergency that includes a night curfew in the hope of not repeating the near collapse of the country’s hospitals.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said the decision to restrict free movement on the streets of Spain between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. allows exceptions for going to work, buying medicine and caring for older and younger family members. He said the curfew goes into effect Sunday night and will likely remain in effect for six months.

“The reality is that Europe and Spain are immersed in a second wave of the pandemic,” Sánchez said during a national speech after meeting with his Cabinet. “The situation we live in is extreme.”

The leaders of the 17 regions of Spain and two autonomous cities will have the authority to modify the curfew in their territory so that it begins between 10 a.m. and 12 p.m. M. And I finished between 5 and 7 a.m. M., They will close regional borders for travel and limit meetings to six people who do not live together, the prime minister said.

The curfew does not apply to Spain’s Canary Islands, which were recently removed from Britain and Germany’s list of unsafe travel destinations due to the favorable trajectory of the virus in the archipelago.

With a curfew on the mainland, Spain is following the lead of neighboring France, where the government ordered a 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew for major cities and large swaths of the country this week.

Health officials have focused on nightlife and partying as some of the main sources of the latest resurgence of infections.

Sánchez said that this week he will ask the lower house of Parliament to extend the state of emergency until May. As the Constitution dictates, a state of emergency cannot last more than two weeks without the endorsement of the Congress of Deputies.

The second national emergency of the pandemic in Spain is not as restrictive as the mandatory home confinement Sánchez ordered in March and lasted for six weeks before being gradually relaxed as the number of new confirmed cases declined.

“There is no home confinement in this state of emergency, but the longer we stay at home, the safer we will be. Everyone knows what to do,” the prime minister said Sunday.

Authorities want to avoid a second complete shutdown of the country of 47 million people to avoid dealing another blow to an economy that the pandemic has plunged into recession and destroyed hundreds of thousands of jobs.

But with the infection rate picking up steam since it began to rise again in August, health experts have called for action at the national level, arguing that the crisis requires more than a patchwork of regional measures.

Several regional leaders, who run Spain’s decentralized health system, had in recent days called for the national government to declare a state of national emergency.

The state of emergency makes it easy for authorities to take swift action without having to get many types of public health restrictions approved by a judge. Some judges have rejected efforts to limit the movements of people in certain regions, which has caused confusion among the population.

Spain this week became the first European country to exceed one million officially registered Covid-19 cases. Sánchez acknowledged in a nationally televised speech on Friday that the true number could be more than 3 million, due to testing gaps and other factors.

Spain reported nearly 20,000 new daily cases and 231 more deaths on Friday, bringing the death toll in the pandemic to 34,752, but the actual death toll is likely much higher. Confirmed cases are increasing in the peninsula, the Balearic Islands and the two African enclaves of Spain.

Under the first state of emergency, Spanish military battalions were deployed to disinfect nursing homes and establish field hospitals. Until now, this has not been necessary, as Spain’s nursing homes are better prepared and its hospitals experience a slower, albeit steady, upturn in cases.

“The loss of life must be as low as possible, but we must also protect our economy,” Sánchez said.

Spain’s measure came when the head of the United Nations said that “the Covid-19 pandemic is the greatest crisis of our time.”

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres opened an online session of the World Health Summit with a call for global solidarity in the global crisis and demanded that developed countries support health systems in resource-poor countries. .

The coronavirus pandemic is the main theme of the summit, which was originally scheduled for Berlin. Several of the leaders and experts who spoke at the inauguration highlighted the need to cooperate across borders.

More than half a million new coronavirus infections were recorded worldwide in a 24-hour period this weekend.

The BBC reports 506,512 as the latest daily figure for new Covid-19 diagnoses, the first time more than half a million new cases have been recorded in a 24-hour period.

That staggering number is also backed by John Hopkins University, which maintains global statistics on coronavirus and recorded 506,000.

The World Health Organization recorded the slightly lower figure of 465,000 new cases for the same period, which remains a record for new cases registered by the WHO.

More than 42 million have been infected with the virus and more than 1 million people have died from Covid.

– AP, additional reports from news.com.au