Spain daily virus death toll spikes to 743 after drop

Spain's daily coronavirus death toll shot up to 743 on Tuesday after falling for four straight days, bringing the total to 13,798, the health ministry said.

However, it emphasised that the rise was due to weekend deaths being tallied and that the overall "downward trend" is continuing.

The new figure represents a 5.7 per cent increase over the 637 deaths recorded on Monday, the lowest number of fatalities since March 24 in the world's second hardest-hit country after Italy in terms of fatal outcomes.

The number of new infections also grew at a faster pace, rising 4.1 per cent to 140,510, the health ministry said. The number of new cases rose 3.3 per cent on Monday.

The "slight" rise was due largely to the fact that many deaths and new infections which occur over the weekend are only now being recorded, said Maria Jose Sierra of the health ministry's emergencies coordination unit.

"In reality the downward trend is what we continue to observe in the reports we have received in recent days," she told a daily news conference on the figures. Spain had seen the number of new infections and deaths drop each day since it recorded a record 950 fatalities on Thursday.

The percentage increase in the number of deaths is far lower than the 32.63 per cent leap recorded as recently as March 21.

The number of people in hospital intensive care units also continues to fall, Maria Jose Sierra added.

Mari Angels Rodriguez, a nurse at the Hospital Josep Trueta hospital in Girona in northeastern Spain, said the number of patients had "dropped significantly" over the past two weeks.

But intensive care units (ICUs) were still overloaded because coronavirus patients spend an average of 14 days in them, she added.

"Each new patient occupies a bed for a long time," Rodriguez told AFP. Eduardo Fernandez, a 39-year-old nurse at Madrid's Infanta Sofia Hospital, also said there had been fewer admissions in recent days.

"But we remain much above or usual capacity," he added.

"I don't know if my colleagues who are in the eye of the storm are able to see (the decrease) because the work pressure is very high."