Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s request to prolong the stay-at-home order to May 9 must still be signed off by parliament, but approval is considered all but certain as the opposition has expressed support.
The leftist-coalition government received widespread backing for the previous two extensions of a state of emergency first imposed on March 14, including from the main opposition conservative party People’s Party (PP).
“From the beginning we have said that (Sanchez) would have our support to save lives, but not to ruin Spain or to hide his mistakes,” PP’s leader Pablo Casado said in an interview with La Razon newspaper published yesterday.
The interview was conducted before Sanchez’s announcement on Saturday that he would seek another extension.
Sanchez is scheduled to meet Casado today as the prime minister aims to launch what he has called “agreements for reconstruction”, a wide-ranging nationwide pact to address the aftermath of the virus’ impact.
An editorial in daily newspaper El Mundo said that Spain was the last country in the world to emerge from lockdown and that Sanchez had “avoided confirming any details” about how it would be conducted.
Over the past 24 hours, there have been some 4,000 new infections, bringing the total to nearly 196,000.
The infection growth rate has fallen to around 2.4%, from highs of 20%.
For five weeks Spain’s almost 47mn citizens have been allowed to leave their homes in only a few exceptional cases: mainly to go to work, the doctor, or the grocery store.
Unlike in other countries, outdoor walks and sports are strictly prohibited.
Spain, the third-worst affected country in the world, after the US and Italy, registered a sharp drop in its daily death toll from the novel coronavirus yesterday with 410 new fatalities – the lowest in almost a month.
“It’s a number that gives us hope,” said health ministry emergencies co-ordinator Fernando Simon. “It’s the first time we are under 500 dead since the daily tolls began to climb.”
The total number of fatalities in Spain has reached 20,453, the health ministry said.
But Simon admitted the daily fall could be explained by the lower registration of fatalities over the weekend.
Such a drop is often followed by a rise at the start of the week.
Nevertheless, he said that the number of deaths, hospital and intensive care admissions were on a downward trend “which clearly indicates that the transmission of the disease has substantially decreased”.
Health workers account for 15.6% of those infected, Simon said.
“Data confirms the breaking of the curve, even with an increased number of tests,” said health minister Salvador Illa, referring to the evolution of the death toll. “It is still a difficult stage, but we are going in the right direction.”
Spain is conducting around 40,000 coronavirus tests daily, one of the highest numbers among European countries, Illa said.
Close to a million tests had been conducted as of April 13.
The latest figures have given some relief to the country’s overwhelmed health system.
In Madrid, regional president Isabel Diaz Ayuso announced that a makeshift morgue set up at an ice rink would close on Wednesday.
And one unit of a field hospital that was set up inside Madrid’s conference centre to treat up to 1,500 people with coronavirus was closed on Friday.
The Spanish authorities believe the country reached the peak of the pandemic on April 2 when they had counted 950 deaths in 24 hours.
But they are not ready to recommend a lifting of the nationwide lockdown, one of the tightest in Europe.
Related Story
