Date Published: 03/03/2020
ARCHIVED - 43 new coronavirus cases in Spain as the total passes 120
ARCHIVED ARTICLE
Murcia is one of only three regions still without confirmed cases
The spread of coronavirus cases in Spain continued in almost all areas of Spain on Monday 2nd March as another 43 positive diagnoses were confirmed, bringing the total of patients being cared for in isolation in hospitals up to 126 and forcing the national government to consider additional measures in response.
As of Monday evening, the cases confirmed in Spain were in the following regions (although the situation is constantly changing, and the number of people discharged after making full recoveries has now reached 3):
Madrid – 29
Cataluña – 17
Comunidad Valenciana - 15
Andalucía - 11 + 1 recovery
Cantabria – 10
Basque Country - 10
Canary Islands - 7 + 1 recovery
Castilla y León – 8
Extremadura - 6
Castilla-La Mancha - 3
Balearics 2 + 1 recovery
Navarra - 2
Asturias - 1
La Rioja – 1
The only ones of Spain’s 17 regions where no cases of the coronavirus have yet been confirmed are thus the Region of Murcia, Galicia and Aragón.
During Monday the EU raised the level of risk presented by the epidemic to “moderate to high” as the number of cases throughout the continent continued to rise, particularly in Italy, committing to seeking ways in which to reduced the impact on the economy, although the responsibility for measures taken within the Union lies with the governments of the individual States. There have so far been over 2,100 cases of Covid-19 reported in 8 of the member States, and while the economic effect is hard to quantify at present EU Commissioner Thierry Bréton estimates that the losses in the tourism sector could amount to 1,000 million euros per month.
Already it is calculated that around a quarter of a million Chinese tourists have been “lost”, meaning that some 2 million fewer nights have been spent by guests in hotels in the EU.
In this context the Spanish government is already being forced to contemplate introducing measures such as closing schools, recommending working from home and imposing restrictions on public gatherings if the outbreak in this country continues to escalate, particularly in areas such as Torrejón de Ardoz in Madrid and Vitoria in the Basque Country, where the virus has not been traced to people arriving from abroad. These may seem like drastic steps, but in Italy the government has already urged people to stand a metre apart in public places – it is difficult to imagine how this is possible in metro stations, theatres and football stadia – and if the current rate of contagion is maintained they may soon become inevitable.
Nonetheless, Salvador Illa, the Minister of Health, insists that the most important thing is to recognize the seriousness of the situation but not to panic. For this reason Spain remains committed to “containment”, the first level of response to epidemics, the hope being that it will not be necessary to upgrade to “mitigation”, a situation which, according to Sr Illa, would have “an important socio-economic impact”.
Meanwhile, at the H10 Costa Adeje hotel in Tenerife approximately 200 of the guests who have been held in quarantine for the last week were allowed to leave on Monday, joining another 100 who had already been released after presenting no symptoms and continuing to test negative for the virus. When the alert was raised at the hotel on 24th February there were 723 guests of 25 nationalities, among whom only four have tested positive after the initial case involving an Italian doctor.
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