Coronavirus: cessation of all "non-essential" activity in Spain for two weeks

Text by: RFI Follow

As of this Monday and until April 9, at a minimum, Spain will be almost completely stopped economically, in order to stem the progression of the coronavirus epidemic.

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Under a new decree-law of the government of Pedro Sanchez, which renews and accentuates the state of emergency decreed 15 days ago, the executive prohibits activities considered non-essential as of Monday.

This will therefore not concern the food sectors - both production and distribution - and health, public transport, the media, banks and part of the administration. For the rest, however, it is all over for the moment, which means that the vast majority of businesses will stop operating.

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The government also obliges the latter to use technical unemployment only when it is essential and to pay all their employees. If this draconian measure is rather well received by the central workers, this is not the case with employers' organizations, who believe that the country may not recover from this hardening from an economic point of view.

The peak of the epidemic in sight ?

" We are living in the hardest and bitterest hours ," said Socialist government chief Pedro Sanchez. A Pedro sanchez who justifies this turn of the screw by the very high rate of contagion of the coronavirus, a rate of death and infected people which does not stop increasing in recent days.

With 838 additional deaths in 24 hours, the macabre assessment of the pandemic in the country this Sunday reached 6,528 deaths, according to figures published by the Ministry of Health.

The obsession here is to achieve what is called the "pico", that is to say the stage from which the curve of the spread of the virus can only change. For the time being, this would only be the case in only seven of the seventeen Spanish regions.

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• Spain
• Coronavirus
• Containment
• Health and Medicine

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