Spain has closed its borders in a bid to deal with the coronavirus crisis

Spain has closed its borders in a bid to deal with the coronavirus crisis.

From midnight last night, only Spanish citizens and residents were able to enter the country via land borders.

Freight will still be able to enter the country in order to guarantee the supply of goods.

Interior Minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, explained that border controls would be reintroduced shortly after the European Commission proposed a ban on non-European Union citizens from entering the 27-country bloc for a period of 30 days.

This measure will have to be approved by heads of state and government before it goes ahead.

Grande-Marlaska said “The prime minister has already stated that this week it is very likely that we will reach 10,000 infections, but our objective is to flatten the curve which is why the Spanish government agreed to re-establish Spanish land border controls.

Marlaska added that the measure would not affect foreign diplomatic personnel and pointed out that the step had been adopted in accordance with other EU countries.

National Police, the Civil Guard, regional police in the Basque Country, Navarre and Catalonia, and the armed forces will be drafted in to establish the border controls.
Spain has registered a thousand new cases of coronavirus in just 24 hours.

The Health Ministry reported that there are 9,191 infections in the country, and that 334 people have died from the Covid-19 disease.

The jump of 13% makes Spain the country with the second-highest number of new daily cases in the world, according to the latest comparable data from the World Health Organization.

With 9,191 infections, Spain has also overtaken South Korea to become the country with the fourth-highest number of coronavirus cases in the world.

Fernando Simón, the director of the Health Ministry’s Coordination Center for Health Alerts, said that the mortality rate for coronavirus remained at around 3% and that the number of cases was expected to rise over the next 10 days.

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