You turn to us for voices you won't hear anywhere else.

Sign up for Democracy Now!'s Daily Digest to get our latest headlines and stories delivered to your inbox every day.

Italy Extends Lockdown, Spain Eases Restrictions, and Russia Notes Surge in COVID-19 Cases

HeadlineApr 13, 2020

At the Vatican, Pope Francis delivered an Easter sermon via video stream from a nearly empty Saint Peter’s Basilica on Sunday.

Pope Francis: “The whole world is suffering and needs to be united in facing the pandemic. May the risen Jesus grant hope to all the poor, to those living on the peripheries, to refugees and the homeless.”

With over 20,000 deaths, Italy has suffered the highest death toll in Europe, and the second highest globally after the United States. Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte extended the country’s lockdown to May 3; it was originally set to expire today.

Meanwhile, Spain, which now has over 17,000 COVID-19 deaths, is slowly reopening some sectors of its economy. Spain’s daily death toll rose again over the weekend but then fell to 517 on Monday. Authorities say the rate of new infections in Spain continues to fall.

In Russia, Moscow hospitals say they are seeing a major spike in cases and have been overwhelmed with admissions in recent days as Russia’s death toll topped 100. Winding lines of ambulances were reported at one Moscow hospital Saturday, where one ambulance driver said he had to wait 15 hours to drop off a patient.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top