Spain Corona Cases Drop But Spanish Economy Plummets

The Spanish Ministry Of Health reported yesterday the lowest numbers of registered cases since March 5th with just 48 cases confirmed and no fatalaties reported in the previous 24 hours.

Over the previous 7 days just 145 cases of patient hospital admissions were due to Covid-19 which was the lowest number recorded since the state of emergency was announced on March 14th.

Fernando Simón, the director of the Spanish Coronavirus Task Force said that in addition to this number some 40% of cases were asymptomatic which ” indicates that progress  continues to be favourable”.

Over half of the population are now living under  Phase 3 conditions with Madrid presently in Phase 2.

The state of emergency is expected to come to an end on June 21st.

However the economic impact of the pandemic on the Spanish economy has been enormous with millions laid off or in furloughed job schemes as businesses were forced to close in response to the state of emergency measures.

The Bank of Spain´s forecast for the economy is of a contraction of up to 15 % and unemployment to soar to over 20%  for 2020.

However the present modelling shows some improvement of up to 9% “bounce back” growth for 2021 and the economy to have recovered to its pre-covid levels by mid 2022 to early 2023. However unemployment is expected to remain high at 17-18% during this period.

The PSOE led government of Pedro Sanchez was already struggling with record public debt and high new spending election pledges. However with debt levels expected to reach up to 115% of GNP question marks remain about their implementation.

Much hope remains with the 750 billion EUR European Union Recovery Plan of which Spain could receive up to 75 billion EUR in grants and over 60 billion EUR in loans.

To date Spain has recorded 288,797 cases of whom 27,136 have died.

 

 

 

 

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