President Armengol announced further mobility restrictions in parliament on Tuesday. These are to be applied to the Arquitecte Bennàssar health area of Palma and to areas of Sant Antoni and Ibiza Town which have the highest rates of coronavirus infection.
The new restrictions will be published in the Official Bulletin on Wednesday and will come into effect on Friday at 10pm. The health minister, Patricia Gómez, said the measures will be "similar to or the same" as those which already apply to four areas of Palma and will last for fifteen days.
Goméz and José Hila, Palma's mayor, will explain on Wednesday how the isolation of Arquitecte Bennàssar will be applied. It has a population of almost 30,000, and Gómez suggested that the whole health area will not be affected, only specific areas with the highest incidence rates. Arquitecte Bennàssar is classified as being a health area (or district) within Palma and includes Son Oliva, the Plaça de Toros area and part of one of the four areas which has already been isolated - Son Canals. Only half of Son Canals was isolated last week.
Armengol stressed that the government will continue to adopt measures to fight the virus. The contagion curve has been flattening in recent days, she observed, "but we have to persevere, as we all know about the extreme virulence of Covid-19".
"This doesn't allow any relaxation. Decisions being taken are ones that no one likes and which require sacrifice by citizens, businesses and workers. But we know that they give results and will enable us to stop the virus sooner and return to normality sooner."
The president reported on the evolution of the health situation since an increase in cases of community transmission was detected in August. "The evolution of admissions has gone from growing by 3.7% daily twenty days ago to not growing in the past five days. We have to keep taking action. We are detecting an average of 150.1 positives per 100,000 inhabitants, a fact which places us seventh among the regions. In addition, we are the region with the sixth highest level of testing - 210.8 per 100,000 inhabitants, while the average in Spain is 160.9."
Armengol recognised that the second wave had arrived earlier than had been expected and that this had "forced us to bring forward measures to reinforce containment which had been planned for October".