Coronavirus death toll in Spain tops 18,000

The official figure for the deaths within the last 24 hours across Spain was 567, a slight rise on the 517 recorded on Monday but the daily increase in new cases was the lowest recorded since March 20th.

 

The overall number of hospitalizations (blue), admittance into ICU (yellow) deaths (red) and recoveries (green) are shown in the chart below, which reveals that the curve of the number of hospital admittances is flattening. Data: Ministry of Health.

Spain has now seen 172,541 confirmed cases of covid-19 after 3,045 new infections were recorded on Tuesday – a rise of just 1.8 percent. the smallest increase since the country of around 47 million people imposed a nationwide lockdown on March 14th to curb the spread of the virus.

The good news is that 67,504 patients who tested positive have now recovered have been discharged from hospital.

The number of coronavirus deaths in Spain peaked on April 2, when 950 were registered.

 

Health authorities say Spain has overcome the peak of the coronavirus, after registering its highest death toll of 950 people on April 2nd.   

"The trend is good, in line with what we have seen in recent weeks," the health ministry's emergencies coordinator, Fernando Simón, told a press conference to discuss the latest coronavirus figures.

But while the fall in the number of new cases means hospitals in hard-hit regions like Madrid and Barcelona are no longer overflowing with people, "beds in intensive care units remain in a situation of high stress," he added.

Spain tightened its lockdown on March 30th by freezing all non-essential activities like construction and manufacturing for two weeks -- a measure that was lifted on Monday despite warnings from some quarters that removing it too soon could trigger a fresh outbreak.

But shops, bars, restaurants and other businesses considered non-essential remained closed and people are only allowed to leave their homes to work if they can not do their jobs from home, or to buy food or medicine or walk their dog.

Transport Minister Jose Luis Abalos said Monday that about two-thirds of people were strictly following the lockdown and "practically do not go outside at all".

The lockdown is expected to remain in place at least until April 25th.

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