Spain's numbers of new cases, deaths and incidence of coronavirus continue to fall

MADRID - The numbers of new coronavirus cases, deaths and the incidence continued to fall in Spain, according to the Ministry of Health on Monday.

Official data showed 20,849 new coronavirus cases for the 72-hour period between 2 pm (1300 GMT) on Friday and 2 pm on Monday, bringing the country's total tally to 3,153,971.

This is a significant fall from the 30,251 new cases the Ministry reported on Feb 15, which means the number of new cases has now fallen for four successive weekends.

The weekend also saw 535 deaths over the 72-hour period, lifting the total number of victims to 67,636. The death toll for the past weekend is also down from seven days ago when 702 people lost their lives.

Meanwhile, the incidence of the virus over the past 14-day period fell from 416 cases per 100,000 inhabitants a week ago to 252.19 cases Monday.

Fernando Simon, director of the Coordination Center for Health Alerts and Emergencies of the Ministry of Health, said the data "obviously shows a downward tendency in the past weeks, but we still have a high incidence of the virus and that means we cannot relax control measures."

Monday also saw Spain pass the 3 million mark for the number of doses of vaccine which have so far been administered in the country. The Health Ministry said that of the 3,622,165 doses that have been distributed in the 17 autonomous regions, 3,090,351 have now been administered, with 1,197,061 people receiving both doses.

As the world is struggling to contain the pandemic, vaccination is underway in some countries with the already-authorized coronavirus vaccines.

Meanwhile, 251 candidate vaccines are still being developed worldwide -- 70 of them in clinical trials -- in countries including Germany, China, Russia, Britain and the United States, according to information released by the World Health Organization on Feb 19.