Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Saturday announced the nationwide coronavirus lockdown would be extended two weeks to May 9, hours after the official death toll passed 20,000.
Sanchez said, “We have done the hardest part through responsibility and social discipline… we are putting the most extreme moments behind us”.
The restrictions currently in place would however be loosened slightly to allow children time outside from April 27, Sanchez added.
Spain, which has been under confinement since March 14, has recorded 20,043 deaths from the virus, the latest health ministry figures showed — the third-highest official toll after the United States and Italy.
According to the health officials, Spain has passed the peak of the COVID-19 outbreak which killed up to 950 people a day on April 2, and pressure is slowly easing on hospitals.
The increase in infections has slowed and the latest daily death toll was 565 people, down from the figure on Friday. The number of people registered as cured has risen to nearly 75,000.
Catalonia has reported that more than 7,800 people have died while the national toll for the region referred Saturday to more than 3,800.
Fernando Simon, the health ministry’s emergencies coordinator, noted during a daily press briefing Saturday that owing to the strict virus confinement measures, “the current level of transmission is much lower.”
The closely-followed rate now indicates that each person infected with COVID-19 in Spain is passing it on to fewer than one other person, which means the disease is no longer spreading.
It was as high as one to three when the Spanish lockdown began.
The government has nonetheless indicated that some economic sectors might not rebound before the end of the year, with tourism the main question mark at the moment.
Earlier this month, almost 900,000 Spanish workers have lost their jobs since the country went into lockdown in response to the coronavirus pandemic, social security data published on Thursday.
Spain has suspended the use of Chinese kits to detect coronavirus after being found to be faulty earlier.
Experts have reached a conclusion that the kits from China are failing to detect positive corona cases. Spanish newspaper El Pais in a report said that the Chinese kits have only 30 percent sensitivity and are able to detect only 30 percent of the positive cases whereas the tests need to be at least 80 percent sensitive to be effective.
Meanwhile, the coronavirus-related cases in the world has now mounted to 2,317,759 and the deaths at 159,510. As the coronavirus crisis continues to surge, we bring to you some of the top developments from across the globe.