With Easter a little over 5 weeks away we are hoping that the various levels of government have all learnt their lessons regarding freedom of movement during the holiday period, after the absolute carnage that we saw following the Christmas and the Three Kings breaks.
With the general public at liberty to travel at will, there is no doubt that the dramatic spread of coronavirus we saw during January was largely attributable, particularly in the southern Costa Blanca and Costa Calida, to the mass exodus of city dwellers to the coast. It is only now that we are beginning to see a drop in the number of infections following many weeks in which the pandemic has had the upper hand.
In an appeal to the Government on Friday, the President of the Valencian Community, Ximo Puig, called on Communities and the Government to reach an agreement in limiting mobility during the Easter period because “We think that the position should be the same across the whole of Spain, because it is especially important to consolidate now. If we consolidate, probably in the coming months, we will then have more opportunities to move towards normalisation with greater vaccination and greater capacity to contain the pandemic,” he said.
Regarding the easing of restrictions at the beginning of March, he added that the effort already made cannot be “wasted”, stating that “we cannot relax just yet as the situation is still very difficult and the risks are still extremely high.”
On Friday, the Valencian Community recorded that its Accumulated Incidence (AI) was below 300 points for the first time since 5 January: 295.44 cases per hundred thousand inhabitants, less than one point above the Spanish average of 294.72.
