Spain cancelled top-flight soccer, shut schools across a swathe of the country and announced the prime minister will hold his meetings by video, after a minister tested positive for coronavirus and the death toll nearly doubled overnight.
Spain, which at first took few steps against the outbreak, changed tack this week after infections soared, declaring a ban on flights from Italy, closing some schools and cautioning against domestic and foreign travel.
The death toll from coronavirus rose to 84 on Thursday from 47 on Wednesday, the health ministry said, a rise of nearly 80 percent overnight and a threefold increase from Monday.
Schools will shut down for two weeks in Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia and Murcia, officials said, adding to a shutdown already in place in the wider Madrid region.
All soccer matches in Spain’s top two divisions have been postponed for two weeks over fears of the spread of the coronavirus, the league’s organising body said in a statement.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez will hold all meetings via video conference starting from Thursday after fellow minister Irene Montero was diagnosed with coronavirus, the government said in a statement.
Montero’s partner Pablo Iglesias, who is deputy prime minister, was quarantined and all ministers will be tested on Thursday morning, the statement said.
The royal family will also be tested after Queen Letizia recently met with Montero.
The lower house of parliament, already shut, will extend its closure, Cadena Ser radio said. Health Minister Salvador Illa cancelled plans to speak in parliament about the coronavirus in what would have been an exception to the suspension.
Sanchez will head a reduced cabinet meeting on Thursday only attended by the ministers whose presence is needed to approve new measures against coronavirus spreading. The cabinet is set to approve a package of measures to mitigate the economic impact of the outbreak.
After that, all further meetings will be held through video conference, the statement said.
In Madrid, the impact of the virus and measures taken to combat it started being felt, with metro stations and bars unusually quiet.
“Business has gone down a lot, really a lot,” said José Manuel González, the 58-year old manager of the Santa Barbara cafe. “It’s very quiet at lunchtime, things have dropped by 40%- 50% since the school shutdown. That’s when things started to change.”
Madrid health authorities asked people to donate blood, after a drop in blood donations over the past days. Doctors in the capital have said over the past days that they were worried they could run out of beds in intensive care units.
