Coronavirus death toll in Spain overtakes China as lockdowns extend around globe
Ashifa Kassam in Madrid 3 hrs ago
6-7 minutes
The death toll in Spain has overtaken that in China, climbing to 3,434 and sitting behind only Italy, in a pandemic that has left about 20% of the world’s population living under lockdown.
After more than a week in lockdown, Spain has emerged as one of Europe’s hardest-hit countries, with 738 lives claimed in the past 24 hours. Italy remains the centre of the crisis with a total of 6,820 deaths – more than double the 3,285 deaths documented in Hubei, China.
In Spain,
healthcare workers account for nearly 14% of the country’s 39,673 cases, officials say. Amid reports of overwhelmed emergency wards, doctors and nurses have complained of a lack of basic protective equipment that has forced them to ration crucial supplies and craft protective shields out of plastic bags.
Two unions representing doctors have filed lawsuits aimed at forcing the regional health authority and the Spanish government to deliver scrubs, masks and goggles to hospitals and other health centres.
Nato said on Tuesday that Spain had asked it for medical supplies, requesting items including 450,000 respirators, 500,000 testing kits and 1.5m surgical masks.
Germany and France have faced criticism over export bans on products such as masks and goggles. The EU is expected to sign off on a “more ambitious and wide-ranging crisis management system” that will include a plea for the lifting of such bans.
Around the world, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases has climbed to more than 423,000. The latest confirmed cases include Prince Charles, who was showing mild symptoms, according to a spokesperson for Clarence House.
The true number of Covid-19 cases around the globe is likely to be much higher. Officials in Spanish regions such as Madrid and Catalonia initially dealt with a shortage of testing resources by asking people with mild symptoms to simply self-isolate, while Italy’s top coronavirus response official, Angelo Borrelli, has suggested the real number of infections there is probably 10 times higher than the official count.
In Ireland, the national public health emergency team announced on Tuesday that coronavirus testing criteria had been changed to prioritise people showing at least two symptoms, in response to a backlog of 40,000 cases awaiting testing.
Around the world, coronavirus has claimed more than 18,000 lives and ushered in a spate of emergency measures.
© Provided by The Guardian Police officers check people coming back from a shopping trip in the village of Herculaneum, Italy. (Ciro de Luca/Reuters)
The accelerating pandemic – it took 67 days to reach the first 100,000 cases and four days to hit the latest 100,000, according to the World Health Organization – has led to an estimated 1.7 billion people being ordered to remain at home.
