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Spain poised to tighten coronavirus lockdown after record daily toll Spain's daily death toll rises again while Italy expects peak in a week
(about 3 hours later)
Health emergency chief says ICUs in six of 17 regions already operating at full capacity Dutch recall 600,000 faulty Chinese masks, and Germany takes patients from France
Spain’s cabinet is poised to approve a tightening up of the national lockdown as the country logged another record single-day coronavirus death toll of 838 people between Saturday and Sunday. Spain has reported another record single-day increase in coronavirus deaths and moved to further tighten its already strict national lockdown, as governments in Europe and beyond struggle to contain the pandemic.
The prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, announced on Saturday that all non-essential workers would be ordered to stay at home for two weeks from Monday, saying 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. Spanish authorities said on Sunday that 838 people had died from Covid-19 in the past 24 hours, bringing the country’s death toll to 6,528, with 78,797 confirmed cases. All non-essential workers are to be ordered to stay at home for two weeks from Monday.
“This measure will reduce people’s movement even further [but] it will reduce the risk of contagion and allow us to unblock our intensive care units,” he said in a televised address. “This measure will reduce people’s movement even further, but it will reduce the risk of contagion and allow us to unblock our intensive care units,” the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said in a televised address on Saturday night.
Spain’s death toll now stands at 6,528 and the country has confirmed 78,797 coronavirus cases, up from 72,758 on Saturday. Fernando Simón, the head of Spain’s centre for health emergencies, said the situation was stabilising but “the main problem is making sure intensive care units aren’t overloaded”. ICUs in six of Spain’s 17 autonomous regions were operating at full capacity.
Despite the high death toll of recent days, the head of Spain’s centre for health emergencies, Fernando Simón, said the situation in some regions appeared to be improving. Spain and Italy account for more than half of the world’s death toll from Covid-19 and are each still seeing more than 800 deaths a day. According to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, the virus has now infected more than 680,000 people and killed more than 31,000 around the world.
“Almost 20% of patients have been discharged,” he said on Sunday. “It seems the evolution is stabilising but the main problem if making sure intensive care units aren’t overloaded.” Sànchez described the crisis as “the most difficult moment for the EU since its foundation” and said the 27-member bloc had to be “ready to rise to the challenge”.
In his daily press conference, Simón said that six of Spain’s 17 autonomous regions had reported their ICUs as operating at full capacity, and another three were rapidly approaching full capacity. He declined to name the regions under the most pressure. Italy’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, late on Saturday also urged Europe to show it was capable of responding. “I will fight to the last drop of sweat, the last gram of energy, to obtain a strong, vigorous, cohesive European response,” Conte said.
“I could get into that, but I think it’s best if the regions themselves give out their own detailed information,” he said. “I’m not going to do it because what we’re working on is making sure that regions who are working at their limits - or are getting close to them - no longer have to do so. Anyway, all the figures could vary from day to day so it would be a bit risky to give specific details.” The country’s deputy health minister, Pierpaolo Sileri, told the BBC he expected the country to hit its infection peak in a week or 10 days “at most”.
Spain’s regional governments could work together to pool resources to help relieve the pressure in certain areas, he added. Spain, Italy, France and six other members have asked the EU to issue “coronabonds” - a collective debt instrument - to help finance countries’ response to the pandemic, but the Netherlands, Austria and Germany have so far firmly rejected the idea.
On Saturday, Simón said Spain, which has been in lockdown for two weeks, was “getting there” when it came to slowing the spread of the virus. Several European countries have turned to China, where the epidemic originated but is now easing, for much-needed medical supplies such as protective masks and testing kits.
“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,” he said. But after Spain on Friday withdrew 58,000 Chinese-made coronavirus testing kits after discovering they had an accuracy rate of just 30%, the Netherlands – which has recorded 771 deaths, with more than 10,000 confirmed cases – on Sunday recalled 600,000 Chinese face masks when they, too, were found to be defective.
Simón also cautioned that reaching a peak would not ease the pressure on Spain’s desperately busy intensive care units (ICUs). They were predicted to be beyond full capacity in less than a week, he said. The Dutch health ministry said two separate tests showed the KN95 masks, supposedly capable of filtering 95% of particles, “did not meet the required standards”. The entire shipment of 1.3m masks would be returned, it said.
“We still have a big problem when it comes to the overloading of our ICUs,” he said. “Patients who pick up the disease today may need a bed in an ICU in seven to 10 days. That means that we’re still seeing a lag between the control of transmission and the saturation of ICUs. It also means they’re going to be overloaded by the end of next week or the beginning of the following week.” France, which has reported 37,575 confirmed cases and a death toll of 2,314, excluding fatalities in its 7,000 retirement homes, evacuated 36 more patients from the hard-hit east to western areas on Sunday, hoping to free up intensive care units.
Two high-speed trains carried patients from Mulhouse and Nancy toward hospitals along France’s western coast, where the outbreak has been limited so far. “We have to free up beds, it’s absolutely crucial that we air out these intensive care units,” said Francois Brun, the head of emergency services at the regional hospital in nearby Metz.
A German military plane was also used to carry patients from Alsace to hospitals in Stuttgart and Ulm. Nearly 4,300 patients are in intensive care in France, which is racing to treble its ICU bed capacity from about 5,000 before the outbreak began.
In other developments:
Patrick Devedjian, a former French cabinet minister and prominent local politician, died in hospital after being tested positive. He was 75.
Thomas Schaefer, the finance minister of Germany’s Hesse state, took his own life apparently after becoming “deeply worried” about how to cope with the economic fallout from the epidemic.
The main opposition candidate in Polish presidential elections called for the vote to be boycotted if the government insists on going ahead with it on 10 May.
Pope Francis called for a ceasefire in all conflicts around the globe to focus on the “fight of our lives” against Covid-19.
Egypt shut its beaches as cases in the Middle East surpassed 50,000.
Tokyo confirmed 68 new coronavirus cases, another record daily increase.
Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, announced further restrictions including limiting public gatherings to just two people.
All travellers entering South Korea will face two weeks of mandatory quarantine starting at midnight next Wednesday.
China continued to relax restrictions, with flights from Hubei province and tube and bus services in Wuhan city, the centre of the outbreak, resuming this weekend.
Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, said on Sunday that the “new way of life” in Iran was likely to be prolonged, as the country’s death toll rose to 2,640 and its number of officially confirmed cases to 38,309. “We must prepare to live with this virus until a treatment or vaccine is discovered,” he said.
In the US, which has reported nearly 125,000 cases and where the death toll has more than doubled in three days, to 2,100, Donald Trump backtracked on a threat to quarantine New York and neighbouring states, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a warning against all non-essential travel in the region.
“Due to extensive community transmission of Covid-19 in the area, CDC urges residents of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to refrain from non-essential domestic travel for 14 days effective immediately,” the warning said.