MADRID – The Spanish government is considering new restrictions, including possible curfew, in hard-hit regions like Madrid to tackle a new wave of coronavirus contagion, Health Minister Salvador Illa said on Tuesday.
The country, which has Western Europe’s highest case load, is likely to surpass one million infections this week and several regions have toughened their coronavirus restrictions in the past fest few days.
‘We have very tough weeks ahead, winter is coming’, Illa told reporters. ‘The second wave is no longer a threat, it is a reality in all of Europe’.
Spain added 13,873 cases on Tuesday, bringing the cumulative total to 988,322. The death toll jumped by 218 to 34,210 including 40 deaths in the past 24 hours alone.
Imposing a curfew in Madrid – one of Europe’s hotspots of the pandemic – and possibly beyond would require invoking a state of emergency, Illa said. Any such measure lasting more than two weeks would require the support of some opposition parties, he added.
But that could prove challenging in Spain’s deeply polarized parliament.
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