Coronavirus: Spain death toll reaches 20,000

More than 191,700 people have tested positive, government says

Spain’s death toll from Covid-19 has surpassed 20,000, the health ministry has said.

The number of people to have died after contracting the coronavirus rose by 565 on Saturday to a total of 20,043.

This marked a smaller daily increase than on Friday, when the government said 585 people had died.

According to Saturday’s figures, 191,726 people have tested positive for the coronavirus in the country to date, up from 188,068 on Friday.

Spain has been one of the countries worst hit by the pandemic, with the third-highest death toll in the world, according to a global count by Reuters.

In the United States, 37,175 people who tested positive have died to date, while 22,745 coronavirus patients have died in Italy as of Saturday.

Spain slightly eased its lockdown measures earlier this week to let people in construction and manufacturing go back to work.

Before that, only essential workers – such as health professionals and the police – were allowed to travel to work, as authorities worked to limit the spread of the virus.

Other lockdown measures remain in place, with people ordered to stay inside unless it is deemed necessary – for example, to get groceries, medicine, or to go to work.

The government announced on Friday that it was planning on paying a basic monthly income to about a million of the country’s poorest households in an effort to help people deal with the financial blow of the coronavirus outbreak.

Spain shed nearly 900,000 jobs during the first two weeks of the lockdown, which was imposed on 14 March to limit the spread of Covid-19, pushing the number of those who are officially unemployed back up to where it had been three years ago.

Additional reporting by Reuters