Date Published: 05/07/2020
ARCHIVED - 70,000 locked down in Lugo, Galicia due to Covid outbreak; Covid Spain
ARCHIVED ARTICLE
This is the second confinement in Spain within the last 24 hours; yesterday 200,000 were locked down in Catalonia
The regional Government of the Galicia Region, in northern Spain, the Xunta, has announced a second confinement within 24 hours, locking down 70,000 people in the comarcas of A Mariña (Lugo) from Monday.
With an area of 1,660 square kilometers and a population of more than 80,000 inhabitants, it is divided into three comarcas: La Mariña Occidental, La Mariña Central and La Mariña Oriental.
The municipalities within the area are the following: Ribadeo, Barreiros, Foz, Burela, Cervo, Jove, Vivero and Vicedo on the coast. In the interior strip are the municipalities of Trabada, Puentenuevo, Lorenzana, Mondoñedo, Alfoz, Valle de Oro and Orol.
The measure comes into effect at 00.00 hours on Monday, July 6th and will be valid for five days, concluding two days before regional elections, scheduled for Sunday 12th.
The president of the Xunta, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, indicated earlier this week that the origin of the outbreak is located in "two or three bars" in the area of the port of Burela (Lugo) and on Sunday, following a video conference with the mayors of the Galician region, Minister of Health, Jesús Vázquez Almuiña, confirmed that the confinement order aims to prevent movement from residents within the area in which the largest number of outbreaks are occurring to other territories and reduce internal mobility.
Residents are not being confined to home and can still move around within the localised area, but will not be permitted to leave the defined boundaries. Bars will be allowed to remain open but with reduced capacity and shorter opening hours.
The first case was detected on June 23rd in the municipality of Xove and since then all the contacts of the people who have been affected by it have been analysed, and hundreds of PCR tests have already been carried out.
This Saturday, the number of cases recording positive shot up to 85, and increased further to 106 on Sunday according to data from the Department of Sanidad. Despite the notable increase in positives, most of them are asymptomatic or present mild symptoms, which is leading to concern that many of those transmitting the virus and are themselves contagious, may be unaware of this situation, hence the decision to confine residents for five days to see how many new cases materialise.
It's interesting to note that Galicia was the first region of Spain to exercise the option of leaving the state of emergency earlier than the rest of Spain, almost a week before the other regions, as soon as it entered phase 3 and was able to make that decision. Even though there were still a good number of cases in the region, the regional government felt that it had sufficient hospital places to cope with an outbreak. It was followed by Catalonia; the two regions which have become the first to lock down again this weekend.....
-->