IS SPAIN GOING SAME WAY AS ITALY?
Foreign Office warns against going to Madrid as virus rockets ++ Europe is now ‘epicentre’ of the pandemic
THE Foreign Office has advised against all but essential travel to Madrid and other regions of Spain – as Europe was declared the ‘epicentre’ of the global crisis.
Spanish authorities declared a state of emergency, allowing the government to take drastic measures in a bid to contain the coronavirus outbreak.
Bars, restaurants and nightclubs were closed in popular tourist hotspots while police roadblocks were set up to stop people moving between cities. Spain has the highest number of coronavirus cases in Europe after Italy – and yesterday announced a near 50 per cent surge in deaths caused by the virus.
As 250 people died in Italy yesterday – the highest number of deaths in one day, taking the total to 1,266 – Spanish health authorities confirmed 4,200 cases, with half of them in Madrid. They estimate the total could more than double by next week.
The FCO is warning against unnecessary travel to Madrid, the province of La Rioja, and three further municipalities in the Basque Country.
It is not currently advising against travel to other areas of Spain, or suggesting that British nationals in the country leave.
The World Health Organisation said Europe had ‘more reported cases and deaths than the rest of the world combined, apart from China’.
‘Europe has now become the epicentre of the pandemic,’ WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. He called on countries to ‘find, isolate, test and treat every case, to break the chains of transmission’,
‘Do not just let this fire burn,’ he said. ‘Any country that looks at the experience of other countries with large epidemics and thinks “that won’t happen to us” is making a deadly mistake.’
In Spain, tourist Mike Jarman from Birmingham was on his way to meet friends at a pub in Benidorm, where all bars and restaurants were due to close at midnight last night.
He said: ‘I’m on the second day of my holiday. It was meant to be a week of fun away with some mates but this is going to change everything.’
Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez said the military would be brought in as his country adopted an Italian-style lockdown to combat coronavirus. He added: ‘It’s an emergency that affects the life and health of all. The government is going to protect all citizens.’
The drastic measure allows authorities to quarantine infected people, ration goods, and take over private hospitals. It has already seen pubs, clubs, discos, gyms and sports facilities ordered to close in several tourist destinations, including Majorca and Ibiza.
The usually bustling capital of Madrid was largely deserted yesterday as the city imposed increasingly tight restrictions. More than 60,000 people across four towns near Barcelona were confined to their homes yesterday with police blocking roads.
Karen Maling Cowles, of the Benidorm British Business Association, said: ‘In terms of the holidaymakers, there’s going to be a lot of people who are twiddling their thumbs tonight.
‘Lock-ins are banned and bars who organise them will be fined. The word is still getting around because it’s happening so fast. It’s really hitting people in the face today.’
A further 500,000 people were placed on lockdown in Murcia’s coastal region in the south-east yesterday – including the popular British tourist destination of La Manga.
The government of Catalonia asked the Spanish central authorities to help it block access by air, rail and water to guarantee the confinement of the whole region due to the coronavirus epidemic, regional leader Quim Torra said.