Spanish PM Sanchez to extend lockdown a final time to June 21

Spain’s prime minister said on Sunday the country needed 15 more days of lockdown until June 21 “to finish with the pandemic once and for all”, and he would ask parliament to approve a final two-week extension to the stay home rule.

“We have almost set out what we set out to do,” Pedro Sanchez told a press conference, as he expressed his intense relief that the number of new cases of COVID-19 in Spain, one of the nations hardest-hit by the virus, had fallen dramatically.

From June 21 a national state of emergency will end and with it the lockdown, allowing citizens to move freely in their regions. From July 1, citizens will be able to move throughout the country.

Spain’s death toll rose by two on Sunday to 27,127, the health ministry said, while the number of COVID-19 infections rose by 96 overnight to 239,429.