The infections have returned to grow in Spain, in a delicate moment for the country with the opening of the tourist season. The European Center for Disease Control and Prevention has again placed the Iberian Peninsula in the red zone together with Cyprus, which is in dark red, the only exceptions in an all-green Europe. According to the calculations of the Financial Times, last week Spain exceeded both Portugal and Russia in contagion rates, and went “from 58 cases per 100 thousand on 29 June to 156 on Tuesday 6 July”.
This increase is mainly due to the Delta variant and the spread of the virus among young people between 19 and 21 years old not yet vaccinated, “but it did not mean an increase in deaths or hospitalizations”, explained the secretary of state for Spain on Wednesday global, Manuel Muniz, visiting Rome.
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edited by Gabriella Colarusso
The autonomous community of Valencia has asked the government to approve a new night curfew in the municipalities with the highest incidence of infections and to also limit meetings in both public and private places to ten people. The national state of emergency in Spain expired on 9 May, so local governments need the authorization of the Ministry of Justice to approve new restrictions.
To contain the epidemic, Castilla y León also decided to close the interior of the nightclubs at the latest at two in the morning for 14 days. But it is Catalonia that has the highest infection rates. “The fifth wave of coronavirus in Catalonia continues to grow with over 8,000 new infections in the last 24 hours, which is causing an increase in hospitalizations, with 663 patients, 53 more than yesterday,” he writes The country. In Barcelona too, the Generalitat plans to reintroduce some restrictions on nightlife to slow down the spread of infections. Despite the increase in cases, however, the government reassures that the vaccination campaign is proceeding quickly with “730 thousand inoculations a day,” explains Muniz.
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The goal is to “vaccinate 70% of Spaniards with both doses by August”. Yesterday the Spanish case was also the subject of a spicy exchange with France. The undersecretary for European affairs, Clement Beaune, urged the French to avoid holidays “in Portugal, Spain, and Catalonia in particular, where many French go to party”. A statement that the Spanish ambassador in Paris did not like: French tourists “have nothing to fear, I encourage all those who want to go to Spain this summer in compliance with health measures”, replied Jose Manuel Albares Bueno . As in many other European countries, the Spanish tourism industry has been heavily affected by the pandemic, with drops in GDP of even more than 25% in 2020.
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