Spain’s daily death toll from the coronavirus inched up on Wednesday to 184 fatalities from 176 on Tuesday, the country’s health ministry said.
The overall number of fatalities from the disease rose to 27,104, while the total number of diagnosed rose to 228,691 from 228,030 the prior day.
Spain has started easing the lockdown for its residents as the pandemic gets under control and applies a two-week quarantine for foreign travelers, practically shutting the border to air and maritime travel to avoid importing new cases from other countries.
The quarantine measure is due to expire on May 24 when the state of emergency lapses, but both can be extended. In any case, restrictions on travel are likely to remain in place for much longer than May 24, no matter how crucial tourism is for the Spanish economy, the sources told Reuters.
The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) emerged in late 2019 in China’s Hubei province, and the virus has spread to 212 countries and territories since then.
To date, COVID-19 cases surpassed 4,342,000 globally, resulting in more than 1,600,000 recoveries and over 292,000 deaths.
On February 11, the WHO officially named the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) as COVID-19, and on March 11, declared it a pandemic.