The government of Spain’s Catalonia region on Sunday ordered residents in and around the northeastern town of Lerida to go back into home confinement as cases of coronavirus spiked.
“The people must stay at home,” regional health official Alba Verges told a news conference. The area, with a population of more than 200,000, was already ordered isolated from the rest of the region last weekend. It marks the first time that Spaniards have been confined to their homes since the hard-hit country exited confinement on 21 June.
The move reimposes the strict conditions of its first confinement, which began in mid-March, allowing people in the affected area to leave their homes only to go to work, get medical treatment or purchase food and other necessities. Gatherings of more than 10 people were also banned in and around Lerida.
El Pais The Catalonian government has ordered total confinement in the city of Lleida, which has nearly half a million inhabitants, and in seven other municipalities in the Segrià area, due to an uncontrolled coronavirus outbreak. The population will have to stay home except to go to work or other necessary travel. La Vanguardia reports it. Catalonia has recorded 816 more infections than yesterday.
In hospitals in Lleida province they already have more than a hundred patients hospitalized for Covid-19, reports the Department of Health.
The new cases in the Barcelona area, El Pais reports, have multiplied by four in the last 12 days.
This indicator, which takes into account the positives of the previous seven days, has shot up from 35.1 cases on June 29 to 138.3 this past Friday, according to data compilation published every day by the Generalitat.
The greatest increase has occurred in Barcelona capital and the southern area of the conurbation, which exceeds 3.2 million inhabitants and is divided into three health regions: the capital, Metropolitana Norte and Metropolitana Sur.
In Lleida, the Government of Catalonia has announced that it is tightening confinement in the Segrià region. The Government has announced the closure, from 12 midnight, of the capital, Lleida, and seven other municipalities in the region. The Government has approved a resolution according to which “all exits and entrances” to these eight towns are prohibited, except for displacements for work reasons, as reported by the Minister of the Interior, Miquel Buch. The Minister of Health, Alba Vergés, added in a press conference held in Lleida, that the residents of these municipalities must “stay at home” except when they have to move to go out to work, to care for minors or the elderly , attend health centers or to buy in food stores, among other exceptions.
The regional government of Spain’s Balearic Islands has approved a resolution that will make face masks mandatory in all public spaces in the archipelago even when social distancing rules can be respected. The measure will come into effect this weekend, according to sources from the regional government.
The Balearic Islands is the second region to adopt such a measure after Catalonia introduced the mandatory use of face masks on Thursday. The resolution, which will be published in the next days in the Official State Gazette (BOE), will modify the “new normality” decree passed by Spain’s lower house, the Congress of Deputies, which sets out the rules for life after the coronavirus lockdown.
CD eNews / El Pais / ANSA / The Guardian
