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The extraordinary Council of Ministers of the Spanish Government approved, this Friday, the declaration of ‘state of alarm’ in the Community of Madrid, in an attempt to impose restrictions on the mobility of populations on the eve of a long weekend in the country neighbour. and in an attempt to stop the spread of covid-19 from the capital, the epicenter of the disease.
The measure -which comes into effect immediately- affects more than 4.5 million people, and is the response of the Executive of Pedro Sánchez to the decision of a Madrid court that, on Thursday, had lifted the mobility restrictions imposed by the Spanish Government in the capital and in nine other nearby municipalities.
According to Spanish media, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, announced the decision in an urgent call to the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso. The two leaders will have agreed “that in the next 15 days the teams will continue talking about the scenarios.” “We need to protect public health now,” Sánchez said.
The restrictions announced by Sánchez, of the PSOE, had received strong opposition from Díaz Ayuso, of the Popular Party (PP), who proposed “fair, sensible and thoughtful” measures, arguing that the economic damage of the government’s restrictions would be too much. This despite the fact that the capital is suffering a peak of infections, with more than three thousand new infections daily, that is, more than 30% of the new cases registered in Spain. The region is the second source of COVID-19 contagion in Europe, with 741 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the last two weeks, only surpassed, in this statistic, by Andorra.
Cases skyrocket in Europe
Meanwhile, the pandemic seems to have re-emerged with force in countries such as Germany, France and the United Kingdom, which, in recent days, have registered numbers of new cases that risk the conviction that a second wave of the disease is being experienced.
In Germany, with 4,516 new cases and 11 deaths on Friday, Angela Merkel has announced that she will impose restrictions if the situation does not stabilize in 10 days. “It will be the days and weeks that come that will decide Germany’s position on this pandemic this winter,” said the head of the German government.
In the UK, there were almost 14,000 new cases and 87 additional deaths on the last day of the week. And in France, the scenario appears to be even worse, with the country registering 18,000 new cases for the second day in a row. The French Government has even expanded the maximum alert classification, already in force for the regions of Aix-Marseille (southeast), Paris and the island of Guadeloupe (French Antilles), which will also apply, starting this Saturday, to Lyon , Grenoble, Saint-Etienne and Lille (in the east and north of the country).
