Spain’s COVID-19 toll on Thursday surged above 4,000, but the increases in fatalities and infections slowed, raising hopes that a drastic lockdown was starting to curb the virus’ spread.
Spain has the world’s second-highest death toll after Italy and has reported 4,089 deaths after another 655 people succumbed to the virus in the previous 24 hours, the Spanish Ministry of Health said.
The figures showed a 19 percent increase, down from a 27 percent rise a day earlier, when 738 people died. The number of cases rose to 56,188, showing an 18 percent increase, down slightly from the 20 percent rise a day earlier.
Despite a national lockdown imposed on March 14, the numbers have continued to spiral, with officials warning that this week would be particularly bad.
However, Thursday’s figures won a cautious welcome from Spanish Minister of Health Salvador Illa.
The numbers “indicate a change in the trend ... which make us think that we are starting to enter a phase of stabilization,” Illa said.
“If this general trend is confirmed ... the number of cases may have neared its peak,” he said.
The Madrid region has borne the brunt of the epidemic with 17,166 infections — just under one-third of the total — and 2,090 deaths. The pandemic has brought the medical system to the brink of collapse, with Spain also struggling to protect frontline workers and provide supplies for testing and treatment.
“Emergency services are overwhelmed at the moment,” Jorge Rivera, spokesman for the main hospital in Leganes on Madrid’s southern outskirts told reporters by telephone. “Practically the entire hospital is dedicated to fighting the coronavirus, both the intensive care unit and the general wards.”
To ease the congestion in Leganes and at another hospital in Alcala de Henares, east of the city, Doctors Without Borders said that it had set up two field hospitals with 200 beds that would treat the less severe cases.
Earlier, Illa said that Spain had inked deals worth 509 million euros (US$561 million) with Chinese suppliers that would mean “all healthcare professionals will have the means to protect themselves.”
“The market is completely crazy,” he told a parliamentary commission. “Not enough masks, respirators and tests are being produced to supply the global market.”
Spain wanted to radically step up the number of tests to reach 50,000 per day, up from a current average of 15,000 to 20,000, he said.
To achieve this, Spain has ordered millions of tests from abroad and instructed local firms to start producing them.
However, on Thursday, the Spanish government said that it had to return a batch of defective tests it received from a Spanish supplier that had been imported from China.
Also on Thursday, Spanish King Felipe VI visited a massive field hospital in Madrid’s IFEMA exhibition center for people with COVID-19.
Wearing protective gloves and a mask, he told reporters that the site “would go down in history” as a “true example of effort, sacrifice and resilience.”
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