Spain extends emergency state as coronavirus spikes in Brazil
● France limits places in schools as Europeans worry about job security
Spain’s left-wing minority government has succeeded in maintaining the country’s lockdown in place despite criticism from opposition parties, as the national parliament endorsed a new two-week extension – the fifth in a row – of the state of emergency.
The country’s lockdown, which has succeed in reining in a Covid-19 outbreak that has claimed more than 27,000 lives in the country, will now last at least until 7 June. The government says at least one more two-week extension will still be needed to complete whatitconsidersanecessarily cautious return of centralised control over health policy to the governors of its 17 regions.
“The path we are on is the only one that can possibly beat the virus,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told a chamber with only a handful of members to limit contagion risks. “Thanks to all the parliament members who have supported the state of emergency because with their vote they have saved thousands of lives.”
Parliament approved the government’s extension request by 177 votes to 161 yesterday, with 11 abstentions.
Since the start of the national lockdown on 14 March, more than 230,000 infections have been confirmed by laboratory tests in Spain, but the number of new infections has been falling.
Mr Sanchez argued that Spain still needed to keep a tight control over the health situation as it started to loosen restrictions and restart economic activity. Small shops have reopened in most of the country, but not in hard-hit Madrid and Barcelona. Travel between provinces remains strictly limited.
Mr Sanchez’s support had been waning with every vote to extend the state of emergency, which gives the government the power to restrict constitutional rights such as free movement and assembly
– key to its sanitary lockdown. The main opposition conservative Popular Party and the far-right Vox party voted “No” yesterday. Both rightwing parties accuse the government of being responsible for the impact of the pandemic that threatened to collapse the nation’s health system managed by Spain’s regions until the state of emergency centralised all efforts.
While infection rates have been falling in Asia and much of Europe, the pandemic is still spiking in Latin America.
Brazil this week became the world’s third worst-hit country with more than 250,000 confirmed cases despite limited testing. In Lima, the capital of Peru, coronavirus patients are filling up the city’s intensive care beds.
More than 4.9 million people worldwide have been confirmed infected with the virus.
In Europe, France is limiting spaces in primary schools, giving priority to the children of essential workers and those in need. Some younger students even go on alternating days, while high schools remain closed. In the new normal, people’s gratitude at being able to shop or eat out again is mingling with worries about job security. Business was slow at a Paris farmers’ market with a mixed mood among the masked, gloved vendors. A man selling peonies and petunias said he was glad to see shoppers again, while a woman selling tomatoes grumbled that her customers were buying less than usual.
Some businesses are quickly adapting to new realities. In Kenya, safari operators have resorted to sharing live broadcasts on social media in the hope that attention to endangered and other species does not fade.
Close to two dozen people have meanwhile escaped from coronavirus quarantine centres in Zimbabwe, with others are illegally crossing the border from South Africa and not reporting to the facilities.
Zimbabwe is using schools, colleges and hotels for the mandatory isolation of people entering the country during a lockdown that is now in its sixth week.