In the Madrid region, which has had 60 percent of the cases nationwide, hospitals are overflowing and facing equipment shortages. Officials ordered that a field hospital with about 5,500 beds be set up in the Spanish capital’s main exhibition center. In the Valencia region, three field hospitals have been added, with a combined 1,000 beds. Hotels have also been converted into hospitals in Madrid and Catalonia, where 122 people have died.
Italy reported 627 new coronavirus deaths on Friday, its highest number in a single day, pushing the death toll above 4,000.
In Germany, Baden-Wurttemberg, which has strong ties to France as a result of postwar reconciliation efforts, has the most infections of any state, with 3,668 people infected with the virus. But its intensive care wards are not yet full, unlike those in hospitals on the French side of the border.
“Governor Kretschmann has offered to help,” Markus Jox, a spokesman for the state health ministry, said in a telephone interview.
More than 350 patients are hospitalized across the border in France, the authorities there said, as the numbers of those infected continue to rise. As of Saturday, police are enforcing bans on entry into parks, forests or playgrounds in the region as authorities imposed more stringent restrictions in an effort to slow the spread of the virus.
In Germany, the authorities in the southern state of Bavaria issued an order asking people to stay indoors in most cases — the most far-reaching measure in the country so far.
Spain has imposed a nationwide lockdown that has been broadly respected, though about 350 people accused of violating the measure have been detained since it came into force last weekend.
