Yesterday, Spain began lifting the national lockdown as the number of new cases is decreasing. Some non-essential services have started coming back to life as the nation neared the one-month-mark since the lockdown order became effective.
The list of services allowed to resume their activity includes health, security and telecommunication services; construction services; cleaning, surveillance, and maintenance services; public transport; and the judiciary.
Restaurants, gymnasiums, training centers, and leisure services, however, are not allowed to reopen to the public as of yet. Some Spanish elite sports teams, such as Real Sociedad (soccer), attempted to resume their training, but Spanish Sports Secretary Irene Lozano intervened in order to prevent that from happening.
As part of the new measures, law enforcement agencies have been posted to train stations and other major transit hotspots in order to regulate and distribute masks and other Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) items in order to help defend the nation from facing a new surge in COVID-19 cases.
We reported that Spanish Sports Council President Irene Lozano announced earlier last week that the various presidents for the different national sports governing bodies were scheduled to hold a meeting today in order to assess the impact of COVID-19 in the nation.
Similar to Spain, on Friday, Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte announced that the country’s quarantine measures would be extended until May 3rd, but that announcement was followed by some better news: Italian sports minister Vincenzo Spafadora believes that training and competition for the country’s elite athletes can resume on May 4th – if the county continues to socially distance effectively.
Spain has been on national lockdown since March 15 and is planning to remain as such until April 29, per Spanish outlet El País.
During these past few days, the nation has seen a decrease in the number of fatalities, reaching its lowest daily death toll since March 26, according to El País.
According to the website worldometers.info, the nation stands second in terms of total cases associated with COVID-19 as they have reported a total of 172,541 infections and 18,056 deaths.