Spain
struggled to cope on Wednesday with a mounting coronavirus crisis as its death
toll exceeded China’s with another 738 lives lost in a single day, and a third
senior government minister was diagnosed with the virus.
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| Temporary hospital at a pavilion in IFEMA convention and exhibition center |
With 3,434 fatalities, Spain now has the
second-highest number of deaths globally after Italy’s 6,820. Nursing homes
across the country have been overwhelmed and a skating rink in Madrid has been
turned into a makeshift morgue.
Police stood guard on Wednesday outside the rink,
normally a popular venue for children’s birthday parties, as hearses arrived at
the building.
Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo became the third
cabinet member to test positive for the virus, but the government said she was
doing well.
Parliament sat late into the night for a session
aimed at approving extending to 30 days a 15-day state of emergency which has
shuttered schools, restaurants and most shops. The extension was guaranteed
after the opposition People’s Party pledged support.
People have been largely confined to their homes
since the lockdown began on March 14.
“We have achieved a near total reduction in social
contact,” health emergency chief Fernando Simon told a news conference, adding
that Spain was nearing the peak of the epidemic.
Diagnoses increased by a fifth to 47,610 on
Wednesday but the total could be higher: 137,000 workers are known to have
taken sick leave associated with the virus, including to go into preventative
isolation.
Medical staff, thousands of whom have become
infected, have taken out lawsuits against the government, complaining of a lack
of basic protective equipment like masks, scrubs and gloves.
The army has asked NATO for ventilators, protective
gear and testing kits, Armed Forces Chief Miguel Villarroya said.
The government had ordered 432 million euros ($467
million) worth of masks, gloves, testing kits and ventilators to be delivered
over the next eight weeks, with the first large batch expected this week,
Health Minister Salvador Illa said.
In an example of how companies are changing
assembly lines to produce medical products, a shoe factory in northern Spain
has switched to making simple protective masks - first for its own personnel
and then for distribution.
“Now we are
working hard to ... make something a little more sophisticated for it to reach
medical use,” Basilio Garcia, chief executive of the Callaghan shoe factory,
told Reuters.
Lockdown has dealt a punishing blow to the Spanish
economy, with tens of thousands of workers temporarily laid off as sectors like
retail, tourism and manufacturing grind to a halt. One of Spain’s biggest
employers, El Corte Ingles, said it would temporarily lay off 22,000 workers at
its department stores. - Reuters
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