MADRID (Reuters) – Spain on Thursday reported the biggest daily jump in new coronavirus cases since its lockdown ended, topping more than 1,000 infections for the second day running.
Health ministry data showed 1,229 new infections diagnosed in the preceding 24 hours and 13,391 in the past week.
The resurgence has prompted some regions to impose fresh restrictions on movement and Britain to impose a quarantine on travellers from Spain.
But the government’s most senior coronavirus expert, Fernando Simon, denied Spain was in the grip of a second wave of infections.
“A second wave would be when we have uncontrolled, widespread community transmission,” he told a news conference.
While acknowledging the virus was spreading freely within some communities in the northeastern regions of Catalonia and Aragon, Simon said most of Spain had the outbreak under control.
He also stressed Spain’s epidemic had become far less deadly than during its early April peak, when the daily death toll approached 1,000.
Just 10 people died in the past seven days, partly as the virus is spreading more among young people, who are less vulnerable to the respiratory condition.
The health ministry is monitoring 483 active clusters of the virus, defined as three or more linked cases spread across different households. Around three quarters of the clusters include less than 10 people, Simon said, though a few contain more than 100 infections.
(Reporting by Nathan Allen and Belén Carreño; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
