The President of Spain, Pedro Sanchez, has announced today that the lockdown will be extended until April 26th. The President spoke of how the Spanish people had saved lives by staying at home and that we had achieved the first stage of the battle, reaching the peak without the health service collapsing all over Spain. He said over the next few days we would pass the peak of the curve but our health system needed this extra time to recover so it could take care of the people struck down by Covid -19 but also to be able to attend to patients who have other health problems. The President Pedro Sanchez said “We have taken very harsh indispensable measures. We need to keep them. They are very difficult for everyone, they will test our serenity, frenetic days for many which will force us to make unthinkable decisions, for many these are the most difficult days of our life. This new extension will have to be approved in Congress early next week but this step will be purely administrative as Pablo Casado the leader of the Partido Popular and the main opposition to the PSOE in Spain has already confirmed his agreement to the extension. The government are working on a plan for how we will come out of this lockdown and restart both social and economic activity.

There has been a total of 7,026 new cases declared today and the total confirmed cases is now at 124,736. The number of patients in intensive care is 6,532 and the number of deaths has now reached 11,744. The number of people who have recovered is 34,219.

Meanwhile in Andalusia there are 7,869 confirmed cases of which 3,896 are in hospital and 364 are intensive care. There have been 426 deaths (Malaga 110, Jaen 46, Granada 105, Cordoba 30, Cadiz 27, Seville 75, Almeria 22, Huelva 11). In Seville there are 1,535 cases and 712 of those required hospitalization with 68 in intensive care. There have been 68 deaths while 53 have been cured.

In Andalusia there have been a total of 376 deaths so far. A total 258 patients have now been declared cured.

In Huelva there are 274 cases, this being an increase of 37 new cases today, 132 have been hospitalized with 11 in intensive care. Sadly, one more death has been reported in Huelva bringing the total to eleven. The good news is eight have now been declared cured.