MADRID, March 17./TASS/. At least 11,178 coronavirus cases are reported in Spain after the virus hit the country in late January, the director of the Spanish Health Ministry’s Coordination Center for Health Alerts, Fernando Simon, said on Tuesday.
According to Fernando Simon, 491 people have died and 1,098 have recovered. Madrid is the hardest hit by the virus. "As many as 1,987 new cases have been reported in Spain since yesterday, bringing the overall figure to 11,178 cases," Simon said, adding that there is neither special treatment nor a vaccine against the novel coronavirus at the moment.
The first coronavirus case in Spain was identified on January 31. The number of infected people began growing at a quick pace after a local outbreak had seized Italy. On March 14, the government approved a high alert regime due to the spread of the novel coronavirus. This includes restrictions on citizens’ travel across the country with the exception of urgent necessity cases. The regime will stay in place for 15 days, and then it can be prolonged if the parliament approves it.
A pneumonia outbreak caused by the COVID-19 virus (previously known as 2019-nCoV) was reported in China’s city of Wuhan, a large trade and industrial center with a population of 11 million, in late December 2019. Cases of the new coronavirus have also been reported in more than 160 countries and territories, including Russia, which has 93 coronavirus cases. The World Health Organization says that the novel coronavirus cases across the globe have exceeded 180,000, with more than 7,000 deaths. The WHO has officially described the situation with the novel coronavirus as a pandemic.