Spain has experienced a further steep rise in the number of coronavirus deaths and cases, as health authorities set about distributing almost 650,000 rapid testing kits.
The virus has now claimed 2,182 lives in the country – up from 1,720 on Sunday – while the number of confirmed cases increased from 28,572 to 33,089.
The increase came as the US scrambled to tackle the coronavirus pandemic amid blunt warnings that time and resources are running out, with the number of confirmed cases in the country rising above 35,000.
In Spain, testing kits are being issued for frontline hospital staff , older people in care homes, and those in regions most affected by the virus. Around 12% of all those diagnosed with the coronavirus – some 3,910 people – are health workers, the government said on Monday morning.
The Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has called on the EU to instigate a “Marshall plan” to counter the economic effects of the crisis, and announced that the country’s state of emergency would be extended until 11 April.
Sánchez’s vice-president, Carmen Calvo, was admitted to hospital for treatment for a respiratory infection, Spanish media reported. Two cabinet ministers and the prime minister’s wife, Begoña Gómez, have tested positive for the coronavirus.
Authorities in Madrid, where almost a third of the country’s cases have been reported, have set up a huge field hospital inside the capital’s main conference centre. The facility at the Ifema centre, which took in its first patients over the weekend, could accommodate 5,500 people.
The country has been in lockdown since 14 March, with people allowed out only to buy food or medicine or to seek medical help or travel to and from work.
Fernando Simón, the head of Spain’s centre for health emergencies, said that talk of the contagion peaking this week could not allow people to become complacent.
“These are going to be crucial days because reaching a peak doesn’t mean things have been solved; it means we have to redouble our efforts to guarantee we don’t take a step backwards,” he said.
By Sunday night, the US had overtaken Spain to become the third most-affected country, behind China and Italy, with the US death toll standing at 417.
Political leaders in New York – where about half the US cases have been reported – told the White House that people in the region felt abandoned and vulnerable.
Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York City, said hospital supplies including ventilators, masks and surgical gloves would be exhausted within 10 days, while Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York state, warned that up to 80% of his state’s population of almost 20 million was at risk of contracting the virus.
“It feels like we’re on our own,” De Blasio told CNN. “We have seen next to nothing from the federal government at this point.”
Donald Trump, the US president, acknowledged there had been a “backup in some states” but said equipment had been ordered for the three worst-hit states – New York, Washington and California – and others.
He also said the US government would be funding 100% of the costs of national guard deployment to assist in the supply chain. He added he had approved major disaster declarations for New York and Washington states and the army corps of engineers would be available for the construction of field hospitals to provide thousands of new beds.
“Whatever the states can get, they should be getting,” Trump said.
But there were fears of a coming change in the Trump administration’s strategy to fight the virus, when the president tweeted: “We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.”
On Sunday, Democrats in the Senate blocked a spending package intended to pump more than $1tn (£870bn) into the US economy to help unemployed workers and companies losing business during the coronavirus outbreak.
Democrats said the bill – Congress’s third effort to blunt the economic toll of the virus – would benefit corporate interests at the expense of hospitals, healthcare workers, cities and states.
In other developments:
• Wuhan, the centre of the coronavirus outbreak in China, has begun to loosen its two-month lockdown on citizens.
• Italy has banned any movement inside the country and closed all non-essential businesses following a weekend in which more than 1,400 people died.
• Three doctors have died in France after contracting the coronavirus, according to the AFP news agency. The French health minister, Olivier Véran, confirmed a hospital doctor died on Sunday. There are reports that a 66-year-old gynaecologist and a 60-year-old GP – both from eastern France where hospitals have also been overwhelmed with patients – have also died.
• New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, announced the country would go into a month-long lockdown from Wednesday.
• Hong Kong said it would ban the entry of all non-residents from 11.59pm on Tuesday, for 14 days.
• More than 670 Filipino health workers have been quarantined over fears they were exposed to coronavirus, while others have resorted to using bin bags for protection as case numbers rise across much of south-east Asia. More than 50 million people in the Philippines remain under lockdown.
• Canada became the first country to warn that it will not send its athletes to the Tokyo Olympics unless they are postponed for a year, as pressure builds to delay the Games.
• South Korea reported its lowest number of new coronavirus cases on Monday, boosting hopes that Asia’s largest outbreak outside China may be abating.
• The disgraced former film producer Harvey Weinstein, who is serving a prison sentence for sexual assault and rape, has tested positive for the coronavirus, according to the prison authorities in New York.
Meanwhile, the head of Germany’s leading public health advisory body said the exponential upwards curve in new confirmed coronavirus infections was levelling off for the first time, due to strict social distancing measures in force across the country.
Lothar Wieler, the president of the Robert Koch Institute, urged caution, saying that many health authorities had not yet submitted their data from the weekend. “I will only be able to confirm this trend definitively on Wednesday,” he said. But he added he remained optimistic.
Germany has closed all its schools, and on Sunday ruled that no more than two people can gather at once, except for families or people sharing a household.
