Asturias – Spain’s first region asks for 15-day lockdown

Spain’s northern autonomous community of Asturias will ask the central government for permission to implement a 15-day lockdown from Wednesday.

Spain’s northern region of Asturias (on the Atlantic Sea) is set to shutdown all ‘non-essential economic activity’ and impose a 10pm curfew to slow COVID-19 infections.

President of the Principality, Adrián Barbón, made the announcement this afternoon after an emergency meeting with his crisis committee, according to Spanish newspapers, such as Las Provincias.

It comes after the region – 1 of 17 autonomous communities in Spain – passed into Spain’s ‘extreme risk’ category of the four-tier system.

(Read BayRadio News’ overview of the four-tier system here.)

According to Barbón’s announcement, the regional government wants to ‘slow mobility and inter-personal interactions’ during a ‘critical’ time for the health system.

More than 30% of intensive care beds (UCI) are taken up by COVID-19 patients in Asturian hospitals – nearly 100 patients – while 625 are currently in hospital suffering with the coronavirus.

According to Spain’s national COVID-19 statistics update published yesterday, Asturias has recorded 400 cases per 100,000 inhabitants over the last 14 days.

This is far from the worst figures in Spain – 12 of 17 regions have an accumulated incidence higher than Asturias over the last 14 days. Read the official report for yesterday’s statistics here.

The region’s UCI capacity is also below eight other autonomous regions.

Positive results from all COVID-19 tests – which form part of Spain’s four-tier alert system criteria – are also below at least 13 other regions, hovering around 10%.

Should Asturias’s petition be approved, it will be the first autonomous region to lockdown its residents in the second wave.

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchéz devolved lockdown and curfew powers to regional governments back in the summer.

This means that – along with the nationwide state of alarm – regional presidents are free to request their own measures as they see fit.

It does not mean Spain will enter another nationwide lockdown – Asturias holds 1 million of Spain’s 47 million people.

More to follow as we learn more… Like BayRadio’s Facebook page for more updates from BayRadio News’ team of fully-qualified, gold-standard NCTJ journalists.

Written by BayRadio