Coronavirus in Spain update – 15 March

Figures for Coronavirus (Covid-19) in Spain continued to rise on Sunday, with the Health Ministry confirming 7,753 known cases and that 288 people have now died from the pandemic.

Of the figures released at 2pm on Sunday, 3,544 confirmed cases are known to be in the Madrid region alone. There are 715 in Catalonia, 630 in the Basque Country, 437 in Andalusia, 401 in Castilla La Mancha, 409 in Valencia and 300 in La Rioja (northern Spain).

Figures for other regions are as follows: Aragón 147, Asturias 137, Balearic Islands 28, Canary Islands 109, Cantabria 51, Castilla y León 292, Ceuta 1, Extremadura 95, Galicia 195, Melilla 8, Murcia 71, Navarra 183.

At 2pm on Sunday, there were 44,439 confirmed cases across Europe, and 152,428 cases worldwide. Yet experts have warned that the real figures could be much higher, as tests are not available to everyone and people can be infected without showing symptoms.

On Sunday, the UK’s Foreign Office advised against all but essential travel to Spain, following the lockdown restrictions put in place by the Spanish government in response to the outbreak of Coronavirus.

Spain officially entered the phase of a nationwide lockdown for at least 15 days from midnight on Saturday, after prime minister Pedro Sánchez announced the measure in an institutional statement following an extraordinary meeting lasting nearly 8 hours.

On Sunday Sánchez held a video conference call with all of Spain’s regional leaders, in order to further coordinate measures to combat the global pandemic.

Spain has followed Italy to declare a nationwide lockdown as other European countries also take more sweeping measures to reduce contact among people and slow the accelerating spread of Coronavirus.

Italy recorded 368 new Coronavirus deaths on Sunday, its largest number of fatalities in a day since the start of the outbreak. A total of 1,809 people have now died from Covid-19 in the country.

Denmark closed its borders and halted passenger traffic to and from the country, a measure that was due to run through to 13 April. France has closed all ‘non-essential’ shops, and Portugal will be imposing restrictions on its border with Spain from Monday.

Germany has announced that it will be temporarily introduce controls on borders with Austria, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg and Denmark.

Poland planned to close is borders at midnight and deny all foreigners entry unless they lived in Poland or had personal ties there. Non-citizens allowed in will be quarantined for 14 days. The Czech Republic and Slovakia took similar action. Lithuania said it was introducing border checks at the frontiers with Poland and Latvia for 10 days and was considering banning foreigners from entering.

Russia said its land borders with Norway and Poland will be closed to most foreigners beginning Sunday.

The steps being implemented globally increasingly mirror those taken by China, which in January made the unprecedented decision to halt outbound transportation from cities with a combined population of more than 60m people, starting with the epicentre, Wuhan, in the central province of Hubei.

For more information on Coronavirus, please follow the advice of the Spanish government (https://www.mscbs.gob.es/) and UK government (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/travel-advice-novel-coronavirus).

Click here for further information (in Spanish) regarding Coronavirus from the Spanish Health Ministry.