The use of masks will remain compulsory in Spain even after lifting the emergency state on June 21.
In a conference on Tuesday, Spanish Health Minister Salvador Illa said that as part of a new ruling by the government, citizens of Spain should mandatorily wear masks outside their homes if the 1.5m social distancing cannot be followed by them. While most of Spain further relaxed measures on Monday, the Health Ministry reported the lowest number of new coronavirus infections since early March.
The total number of confirmed infections is now at 241,550. The ministry also confirmed no new deaths, but reported that 56 people have died of the infectious disease over the past week. Yet, the total number of fatalities now sits at 27,136 – up only nine from last Monday.
This discrepancy is due to Spain’s controversial system of only adding deaths to the total fatality count that occurred and were reported the day prior to publishing the daily numbers. If someone, for instance, died of COVID-19 on Saturday, but the death was not confirmed until Sunday, this system excludes that fatality from the total death count. Despite questions around the data, much of the country moved forward to ease lockdown measures on Monday.