Lockdown extended to April 26th as statistics offer hope

Spanish President Pedro Sánchez has announced that he will seek to extend the lockdown by a further two weeks, until the 26^th April. A vote will be scheduled this week and is expected to be passed by congress.

“Once the peak of propagation of the virus is passed, we’ll be able to flatten the curve,” said Sánchez. However, he did not discount the possibility that further extensions to the lockdown may be required.

Sánchez also announced that the special restrictions introduced on 30^th March banning “non-essential activity” will be lifted from the 9^th April, meaning that sectors such as construction can return to work.

Positive signs

Meanwhile, recent statistics in Spain and the Canaries give cause for cautious optimism that the lockdown restrictions are finally starting to work in Spain and on the Canaries.

Although the figures are still shocking, Spain’s daily death toll has shown a decrease for the last two days . The figures reached a peak on 2^nd April with 950 deaths, but fell to 932 on April 3rd and 809 on the 4^th.

The worst death totals in the Canaries also occurred towards the end of March, with 15 deaths reported on the 30^th and 9 on the 28^th. However, daily totals from the 1^st to 4^th April are 6,5,5 and 2.

Regarding new cases, Spain has also seen a drop in the last two days, reporting 7,026 on the 4th and 7,424 on the 3^rd. These are a significant decrease on the highest daily tally of 9,222 new cases, reported on the 31^st March.

On the Canaries, the totals of new cases for the first four days of April (64, 46, 74 and 58) stand in contrast to the last eight days of March, when they regularly exceeded 100 new cases (100, 127, 94, 147, 100, 79, 58 and 118).

Before jumping to conclusions, it should be pointed out that the total of cases is reliant on how extensively testing is carried out. It’s too early to say for sure whether these figures are concrete grounds for hope, but they can certainly be described as positive rather than negative.