Sunday, March 29, 2020

About to get tougher

Spain’s cabinet is meeting this morning to approve a tightening up of the country’s lockdown that will see all non-essential workers ordered to stay at home for two weeks.

The prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said the “extraordinarily tough” measures were needed as the county tries to halt the spread of the virus and reduce the strain on its overstretched hospitals.

“This measure will reduce people’s movement even further [but] it will reduce the risk of contagion and allow us to unblock out intensive care units,” the prime minister said in a televised address on Saturday night.

Despite the high death toll of recent days, Fernando Simón, the head of Spain’s centre for health emergencies, said that the situation in some regions appeared to be improving.

“We’re getting there,” Simón told a press conference on Saturday afternoon. “We don’t know exactly when we’ll get confirmation, but we’re getting close to the peak of the curve that we’re studying so anxiously. In some parts of the country, they probably may even have passed it – but we need to be cautious with preliminary information.”

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