The third day of decreasing numbers of new cases has given Spain hope - Copyright Emilio Morenatti/Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
The number of new coronavirus cases recorded in Spain has dropped for a third day in a row, suggesting strict social distancing measures have begun to show their effects.
On Sunday, the Spanish Health Ministry said a further 6,023 people had tested positive for COVID-19.
This is a lower number than recorded on Saturday, when 7,026 new infections were announced, and on Friday, which had 7,472 new cases.
The number of deaths has also fallen for a second consecutive day - with 674 announced on Sunday, in comparison to the 809 announced the day before.
In a press briefing on Sunday, Maria Jose Sierra, from the Centre for Health Alerts and Emergencies, said "one in three" patients with coronavirus had now recovered, before laying the next steps of the "de-escalation" of the crisis.
She said the governments goal would eventually move into a stage of testing everyone with symptoms of the virus, and confirmed that "serious" studying of the effectiveness of face masks was underway.
It comes a day after Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told citizens the country was finally "in a position to bend the curve".
In a press conference, he announced an extension to the three-week lockdown - to April 25 - but warned that Spain was not yet out of the woods.
He said: "If the climb has been hard, lets not fool ourselves, the descent will not be smoother.
"We are facing the great crisis of our lives."
Spains total number of COVID-19 infections now sits at 130,759, while more than 12,000 people have lost their lives.
On Friday, it surpassed Italy to become the second worst virus-hit nation in the world - behind that of the United States.
Therefore, any consideration of relaxing stringent lockdown measures during this time "would have a worse result than returning to the starting point," Sanchez said at the conference.
He added: "The victory that puts an end to it will only come with a vaccine that unfortunately will take a few months."
Source: WHO/ECDC
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