Spain overtakes China virus toll with 3,434 deaths - government

25 Mar, 2020 10:51 / Updated 4 minutes ago

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FILE PHOTO. A member of the Spanish army talks with Spanish National policemen in Madrid, Spain. ©REUTERS / Juan Medina 

Spain has now surpassed China in its number of fatalities due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The latest government tally puts the number of deaths at 3,434.

The Spanish health ministry said it has registered 738 new coronavirus deaths since Tuesday. The overall number of cases in the southern European nation has soared to 47,610, from 39,673 the day before.

There have been 3,281 coronavirus death on mainland China so far, according to official statistics.

The country, where the global outbreak started, has managed to quash the Covid-19 epidemic with tight quarantine measures. It still gets its share of new cases of the disease though, authorities say, as it imports them from other nations.

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Meanwhile, Spain is not the only European country to top China in the sad statistics of fatalities. The death toll in Italy surpassed that of China last week as the infection overwhelmed its health system. It has 6,820 reported fatalities so far.

Spain is also struggling to deal with the health crisis. Madrid has had to repurpose the giant ice rink of the Palacio de Hielo as a storage facility for the bodies that city morgues have no capacity to collect and bury.

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