With its daily death toll from Covid-19 trending downward in the past week, Spain allowed construction workers to return to sites yesterday after a two-week shut down.
Factories and some companies in the service sector also resumed activity in the country, which has the world’s third highest pandemic death rate, at 18,056 today, behind Italy and the US.
The government did not expect a fresh spike in cases as a result of the resumption, said María José Sierra, the spokesperson for Spain’s Health Emergency Coordination Center.
“If a person detects any symptoms, it is important for them to stay home or at work and to self-isolate, and to contact the health system,” she told journalists ahead of the return on Friday, 10 April, El Pais reported. “We don’t believe that contagion is going to increase.”
Support for the move was not unanimous in the government’s committee of experts, with some favouring a longer shutdown.
Antoni Trilla, an epidemiologist who sits on the committee, told El Pais that he believed “it would be the sensible thing” to keep workers home for longer.
Since a peak of 961 deaths a day recorded on 2 April, the daily death toll has trended downward, with 547 recorded on 13 April, according to data compiled by Worldometer.