Spain now has more corona cases than China
MADRID: Spain has become the third country to surpass China in coronavirus infections after the United States and Italy. With a population of 47 million, the country’s tally of infections reached 85,195 on Monday, a rise of 8% from a previous day.
Monday also saw 812 fatalities to 7,300 since the outbreak started in earnest in early March, Spain’s Health Ministry said.
In Madrid, where nearly half of the total deaths have been recorded, flags were hoisted at half-mast as authorities declared the official mourning, with a minute of silence expected at noon time.
Authorities also step up the country’s half-a-month lockdown on Monday, beginning with a new two-week period of “hibernation,” as described by a Spanish Cabinet member in order to alleviate the pressure of the illness in the country’s health system.
Only workers in hospitals, pharmacies, the food supply chain and other essential industries are required to work until the end of Easter, in mid-april, while the rest have been asked to scale back operations to weekend-level.
At l east si x of Spain’s 17 regions are at their limit of ICU beds and three more were close to it, authorities said, while frantic construction of field hospitals continues.
In Belgium, the death toll from the coronavirus passed the 500 mark on Monday, with almost 12,000 cases detected since the start of the epidemic.
Health authorities in the country of 11.4 million said 513 Covid-19 deaths had been recorded and 11,899 cases confirmed by laboratory tests.
The number of confirmed cases in Germany rose to 57,298 and 455 people died, statistics from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Monday.
Cases rose by 4,751 compared with the previous day while the death toll climbed by 66, the statistics showed.
The highest number of cases, 13,989, are in the southern state of Bavaria, where the disease first appeared in Germany
European governments moved to tighten restrictions to contain the coronavirus outbreak amid an unrelenting rise in infections and deaths.
Austria announced on Monday that people will now have to wear face masks while shopping in supermarkets; hotels will be closed completely for tourism; and people that are particularly at risk due to prior illnesses must be relieved from work requirements.
Greece is extending the closure of non-essential shops until April 11 and stopped all flights to and from the Netherlands and almost all connections with Germany, after already cutting links to Italy, Spain, Turkey and UK.