Two Spanish regions, Castilla and Leon and Valencia, urged the central government on Friday to impose night-time curfews quickly to stem the coronavirus spread after authorities failed to reach a decision on such restrictions on Thursday.
The regions have a high degree of autonomy and are largely responsible for responding to the pandemic but restrictions on freedom of movement, like curfews, require the intervention of the national government.
With COVID-19 cases soaring this week to total over a million, the highest tally in Western Europe, the central government favours curfews. But it postponed a decision after the regions of Madrid and the Basque country opposed such a move on Thursday.
“We want this to happen today if possible, rather than tomorrow,” said Alfonso Fernandez Manueco, the regional leader of Castilla and Leon.
“The virus doesn’t understand administrative boundaries or different political stripes,” he told a joint news conference with Health Minister Salvador Illa.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was due to make a televised address at around 1100 GMT to speak about the pandemic.
Valencian leader Ximo Puig told his administration to draft legislation to unilaterally enforce a night-time curfew until Dec. 9.
“We have to try to get ahead of the virus so that the Christmas holidays can go ahead,” he said.
In Madrid, where a city-wide two-week lockdown will expire on Saturday, regional authorities plan to move to more localised confinement in some neighbourhoods. Socialising between different households will be banned across the city between midnight and 6 am. Midnight is still quite early by Spanish nightlife standards.
Despite increasingly stringent measures, the country’s daily infection rate keeps rising. A record 20,986 cases were added on Thursday, bringing the total to 1,026,281. The death toll stands at 34,521.
Poland will close restaurants and bars for two weeks and limit public gatherings to five people, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Friday, after new coronavirus infections hit a daily record of more than 13,600.
Officials said the aim of the new restrictions was to limit the growth of infections, and that without them daily cases could jump to as many as 25,000.
“Our actions must be much more decisive,” Morawiecki said, announcing the new curbs that come into force on Saturday. “What worries us a lot is the speed of the increase.”
It was not immediately clear whether Morawiecki’s nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) government would allow protests planned for Friday evening over Thursday’s decision by the Constitutional Court to severely limit abortion rights.
Hundreds took to the streets late on Thursday, already in contravention of curbs limiting public gatherings to 10 people in major cities, after the court said pregnancy terminations on the grounds of foetal defects were unconstitutional.
The decision meant banning the most common of the few legal grounds for ending a pregnancy in the largely Catholic country.
Isolated scuffles with the police broke out near the house of PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski on Thursday, with government critics saying the court had acted on the party’s behalf, a charge it denies.
Morawiecki appealed to those over 70 to stay home, although did not announce a mandatory lockdown for them.
The government will launch a hotline for the elderly to get help shopping for food and medication, and plans to involve its volunteer military corps to run deliveries.
Schools will remain open, but only children up to third grade will attend, with older students moving to distance learning.
Poland’s healthcare system has begun to buckle under the weight of mounting coronavirus infections, forcing the government to set up field hospitals.
The Health Ministry reported 153 deaths on Friday, down from a record high of 168 a day earlier, taking the total toll to 4,172.
Officials also said no decisions have been taken yet regarding potential restrictions for All Saints’ Day on Nov. 1, when millions of Poles traditionally visit cemeteries to commemorate their deceased loved ones.
REUTERS