Spain govt seeks 2-week extension of lockdown
Spain's government on Tuesday said it could seek parliament's approval to increase the state of emergency by another fortnight, until June 7, even while the quantity of new coronavirus cases keeps falling.
The existing state of emergency is defined to expire on, may 23 and Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez had primarily said he'd seek an extension of around per month.
However the government reduced the request to fourteen days to secure the support of the centre-right Ciudadanos party, thereby guaranteeing it could pass during Wednesday's vote in the 350-seat chamber where Sanchez's coalition is in a minority.
"When there is no state of emergency, we won't have the capacity to restrict movement and the ongoing sacrifice that everyone has made could have served for nothing," government spokeswoman Maria Jesus Montero said.
The lockdown was first imposed on March 14 and it has since been renewed four times, despite growing criticism of Sanchez over his management of the crisis, notably from his rightwing opponents who didn't support the last extension fourteen days ago.
The government has also not ruled out an additional extension, having demonstrated itself in favour of continuing until the rollback of the lockdown restrictions is completed towards the end of June.
"Limiting mobility, which is a fundamental right, can only just be achieved like this," said Health Minister Salvador Illa.
The federal government says the decree has allowed it to battle the epidemic and bring down the daily number of new cases, which on Tuesday stood at 295, health ministry figures showed.
Over the same period, 83 persons died from the virus, in that which was the 3rd straight day the figure have been under 100.
Fernando Simon, medical ministry's emergencies coordinator, said the medical authorities had were able to reduce the time between initial consultation and diagnosis of infection "to under 48 hours".
This, he said, meant that "if the cases of the epidemic flared up again, we'd be capable of locating (them) quickly".
Spain has suffered just about the most deadly outbreaks of the virus, suffering a lot more than 27,700 deaths out greater than 232,000 cases.
However the government's management of the crisis has come under fire in recent days with street protests in Madrid and other cities, where demonstrators banged pots and demanded Sanchez's resignation amid cries of "freedom".
"(These protests) are demanding freedom of movement and what that means at this point with time... may be the freedom for the infection to spread and freedom to impact the fitness of other people," spokeswoman Montero said.
Figures from a survey by the state-run Centre for Sociological Studies (CIS) published on Tuesday showed 95 percent of Spaniards support the lockdown and 60 percent believe it should be extended, despite the protests. -- AFP
