Spain overtakes China virus toll with 3,434 deaths - government

The Spanish health ministry said it has registered 738 new coronavirus deaths since Tuesday. The overall number of cases in the southern European nation has soared to 47,610, from 39,673 the day before.

There have been 3,281 coronavirus death on mainland China so far, according to official statistics.

The country, where the global outbreak started, has managed to quash the Covid-19 epidemic with tight quarantine measures. It still gets its share of new cases of the disease though, authorities say, as it imports them from other nations.

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Meanwhile, Spain is not the only European country to top China in the sad statistics of fatalities. The death toll in Italy surpassed that of China last week as the infection overwhelmed its health system. It has 6,820 reported fatalities so far.

Spain is also struggling to deal with the health crisis. Madrid has had to repurpose the giant ice rink of the Palacio de Hielo as a storage facility for the bodies that city morgues have no capacity to collect and bury.

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The Madrid metropolitan area, where the outbreak initially started in Spain, has the most cases of any Spanish region. The Basque Country in the north has also been hit hard.

Researchers throughout the world are working on several vaccines that would help curb the pandemic, though they are all still months away from being tested and approved.