The number of Covid-19 cases in Spain now over 100,000

Figures from the country’s health ministry suggest the spread of the virus may be continuing to slow as Spain passes into what the government has called the “stabilisation phase”.

By yesterday, Spain had recorded 102,136 cases and 9,053 deaths, and the past 24 hours have seen yet another record single-day death toll of 864.

However, health officials say a “trend change” has been seen over recent days. Between 15 and 25 March, new cases were growing at a rate of 20% a day. From 25 March, however, that rate dropped to 12%.

On Monday, the government said the figures needed to be treated “extremely carefully”, but added they showed that the lockdown measures were paying off. María José Sierra of Spain’s centre for health emergencies said the latest figures showed that the situation was continuing to level out.

“Generally speaking, we can say that yesterday’s rise in cases – which was around 8% – tells us that we’re carrying on in the stabilisation phase of the pandemic,” she told a press conference yesterday morning. “If we only look at cases of people who are being treated in hospitals – which are the figures that allow for a precise analysis of the spread of the epidemic and of the effectiveness of our measures against the virus, such as social distancing – then the percentage is still coming down in comparison with previous days. That helps tell us that the social distancing measures are really working.”

Sierra pointed out that 22% of those who had caught the disease – 22,647 people – had recovered, but said health authorities were focusing on the patients in the country’s overstretched intensive care units.

“The figures when it comes to both the number of people in ICUs and the number of people who have died are really telling us what happened two or three weeks ago, when people became infected,” she added.