Spain has crossed the threshold of 100,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus,Spanish health officials announced on Wednesday.
According to official figures, it now has more cases than any country except Italy and the US. Spain also reached a new record single-day death toll between Tuesday and Wednesday, with a total of 864 deaths. The country has now logged 102,136 cases of the virus and 9,053 deaths.
However, health officials say a “trend change” has been seen over recent days. Between 15 and 25 March, new cases were growing at a rate of 20% a day. From 25 March, however, that rate dropped to 12%.
On Monday, the government said the figures needed to be treated “extremely carefully”, but added they showed that the lockdown measures were paying off. María José Sierra of Spain’s centre for health emergencies said the latest figures showed that things were continuing to level out.
“Generally speaking, we can say that yesterday’s rise in cases – which was around 8% – tells us that we’re carrying on in the stabilisation phase of the pandemic,” she told a press conference on Wednesday morning.
