The Catalan government considers that the lockdown situation that exists in all Catalan territory and the evolution of the disease data in the outbreak of Igualada allow to raise the specific confinement of Conca d'Òdena, informed the chief of the Catalan cabinet, Meritxell Budó, in a press conference held on Saturday to follow the evolution of the disease.
This decision, following the instructions of the Territorial Plan for Civil Protection of Catalonia (PROCICAT) technical committee, will involve the lifting of the police block around the municipalities of Igualada, Òdena, Santa Margarida de Montbuí and Vilanova del Camí. The controls, however, will be maintained.
The Catalan minister of interior, Miquel Buch, has explained that in the next few hours this resolution will be submitted to the ministry of health for authorisation. Buch has argued that the perimeter confinement was decided on March 17th and it no longer makes sense because all of Catalonia is now in lockdown. "There is no point in maintaining a perimeter line.”
The minister recalled that they have to ask the Spanish government for authorisation because with the centralisation of powers, Pedro Sánchez's executive decided to "subordinate" the Catalan government to the decisions of the Spanish ministry.
The Catalan minister of health, Alba Vergés, has also explained that the growth of the disease rate has notably slowed down in Conca d'Òdena and behaves in a similar way to the rest of the Central Catalonia, while the basic reproductive number (RO) of the disease in Igualada, last dated on April 3rd, is already 0.1 lower than in the rest of Catalonia.
Nevertheless, Budó, Buch and Vergés have insisted that this does not mean that security measures will be relaxed, just that it has been possible to adopt the measure once the decrease of mobility registered in all Catalonia was verified.
Precisely this morning, the mayor of Igualada, Marc Castells, made public the discrepancies in the data available to the town councils of Conca d'Òdena in relation to those provided yesterday by the Catalan ministry of health. While the ministry had reported in its daily balance of Catalonia that there had been no new victims in Igualada, Castells has assured that the funeral home of Òdena had reported 11 new deaths.
Vergés has argued that the Catalan ministry of health provides verified data, part of the official register of Public Healthcare — "it is the most reliable we have and verifying it requires some time", she has insisted —. However, she recalled that the Catalan government has set up an alternative register with the country's undertakers in order to make the information directly available. Vergés informed that, according to this official system, there have been 135 deaths in Conca d'Òdena, and in the last few hours 12 more cases have been added, bringing the total to 147 deaths by Covid-19. In addition, 21 cases have yet to be catalogued and are not yet confirmed.
"We can do anything with data, but especially when we talk about mortality we are talking about people, with names and surnames, about very harsh stories these days," warned the minister who asked that data to be respected.
In regard to the extension of the state of alarm issued by the Spanish government, Budó has assured that they learned of it through the media.