SPANISH NOW PASS ITALIANS
Ice rink used as morgue in Madrid as troops discover elderly dead in beds and death rate outstrips Italy
‘4,000 Spanish health workers are infected’
‘It is a living nightmare’
THE rate of death and infections in Spain is now higher than Italy, it emerged last night, after 462 people were killed by the coronavirus in just 24 hours.
Madrid recorded a 27% jump in fatalities yesterday, sending the toll surging to 2,182 – the third-highest in the world.
New infections went up by 4,517 to 33,089 in the 24-hour period to yesterday morning – a 16% leap.
Just hours later, France reported a 29% jump in its figures – with 186 more killed by Covid-19 – sending the total figure to 860.
Infections also went to 19,856 – an 18% increase.
Last night, France which already has the strictest lockdown rules in Europe, limited walking the dog or a jog to once a day and only within 1km of home.
Four doctors have now died from the virus there.
Yesterday, footage emerged online which claimed to show the sick forced to lie on the floor in a Spanish hospital corridor.
Patients can be heard violently coughing as healthcare workers try to comfort them.
Italy remains the worst-hit nation in the world, with 6,078 deaths and 63,927 infections.
But its 602 deaths and 4,789 new infections yesterday represented a slowdown for the second day in a row – to 11 and 8% increases respectively – meaning the pandemic is now growing fastest in Spain.
Last night, a Spanish minister said soldiers found elderly coronavirus victims dead in their beds at care homes. In Madrid, an ice rink is being turned into a temporary morgue.
Over the weekend, an exhibition centre was turned into a 5,500-bed field hospital.
A national lockdown only allows Spaniards to leave home if they cannot work remotely, or to buy medicines and food. Dog walking is also permitted. Nearly 4,000 Spanish health workers – more than 10% of overall cases – have been infected with the virus.
Yesterday, a spokesman at the Spanish embassy in London said they could not confirm whether the video of patients on the floor was genuine, but said there had been ‘extreme congestion’ in hospitals.
Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte yesterday announced tougher lockdown measures, banning citizens leaving their home towns and shutting down swathes of ‘non-essential’ industries to further reduce volumes of commuters.
A BBC reporter yesterday told how he went for a jog only to be stopped by police for going more than 300 metres from his home. Italian doctors tell of their living ‘nightmare’.
Francesca Mangiatordi, an emergency room medic at a hospital in Lombardy, the worst-hit region, said: ‘Do not underestimate this situation... Brace yourself with much patience and strength because it will last a long time.’
Enrico Storti, an intensive care hospital director, said: ‘It’s a nightmare. Every single aisle is filled up with beds and you can hardly recognise where you normally work. We forget to eat, we forget to drink and we are keeping on working.’
Yesterday, Brussels warned countries closing their borders caused huge traffic jams at crossings and held up deliveries of vital supplies.
Issuing a blueprint for goods vehicles to be given priority at crossings, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen called on EU capitals to slash red tape for haulage workers to allow goods lorries to cross borders in 15 minutes. In Austria, army reservists were deployed for the first time since World War Two.
They will help deliver food, transfer patients and police borders and domestic restrictions.
In Germany there were signs of a slowdown in the number of new infections just 24 hours after Angela Merkel launched one of the toughest lockdowns in Europe.
Lothar Wieler, head of Germany’s public health body, said: ‘I am optimistic’. He credited bans on large gatherings, school closures and advice about hand-washing.
Germany has had only 111 deaths despite 27,500 confirmed cases.
The death toll in Europe passed 10,000 last night.