Daily US Times: The Spanish government has urged Madrid authorities to tighten coronavirus restrictions across the city, warning of a “serious risk” to residents if they do not.
On Friday, Madrid extended restrictions in Covid-19 hotspots but rejected calls for a city-wide lockdown.
Spain’s Health Minister Salvador Illa said on Saturday that current restrictions did not go far enough.
He said it was “time to act with determination” to control the pandemic.
“There is a serious risk for inhabitants, for the neighbouring regions,” the minister said, calling on the capital’s regional authorities to “put the health of citizens first” and impose a partial lockdown on the entire city.
Regions in Spain are in charge of healthcare and so the central government does not have the power to impose the restrictions it prefers.
Madrid is again at the epicentre of the country’s coronavirus outbreak, as it was during the first peak earlier this year. On Friday, the country recorded a further 12,272 cases, bringing the official total to 716,481, the highest infection tally in western Europe.
In recent weeks, Spain and many other countries in the northern hemisphere have seen a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued a stark warning about the resurgence of the coronavirus in Europe and elsewhere as winter approaches.
Dr Mike Ryan, head of the WHO’s emergencies team, said on Friday that European countries were seeing “worrying increases of the disease”, with “a small uptick in deaths in older people” that will inevitably increase.
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