MADRID • Madrid's regional government chief Isabel Diaz Ayuso has requested the army's help to fight the Covid-19 surge in and around the Spanish capital, where the authorities have ordered a partial lockdown of some of the poorer areas, prompting protests during the weekend.
At the height of the first wave of the epidemic in March and April, Spain deployed thousands of troops to battle the outbreak.
A recent spike in infections, peaking at over 10,000 a day, took cumulative cases above 670,000, the highest in Western Europe.
"We need help from the army for disinfection ... and to strengthen local police and law enforcement," Ms Ayuso told a news briefing on Monday, after meeting Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in a bid to reduce contagion rates in Spain's worst-hit region.
She also requested that makeshift hospitals be set up again, about three months after they were decommissioned when Spain emerged from its strict lockdown, having reduced contagion rates.
Mr Sanchez said the central and regional governments would determine the size of the military and police reinforcements at a meeting later.
Meanwhile, residents in the southern district of Vallecas, one of the areas where the partial lockdown started on Monday, were upset but resigned to the curbs, as police stopped cars getting in and out of the neighbourhood.
Ms Ayuso's government had ordered mobility restrictions in areas that are home to about 850,000 people, sparking complaints of discrimination and protests.
The Madrid authorities said they had chosen those areas because contagion levels there exceeded 1,000 cases per 100,000 people.
But some residents complained that the measures, which allow people to go to work or school, failed to address the problem of an overcrowded transport system. "They should regulate the metro, (where) we are packed like sardines," said a housewife from Vallecas.
Local businesses felt the pinch. "We had no business this morning; it is empty," said Mr John Michael Montana Sanchez, who manages three restaurants on the same street in Vallecas.
REUTERS
