Spain recorded a second successive daily rise in Covid-19 deaths at 757, lifting its total toll to 14,555 on Wednesday, as European Union’s disease monitoring agency said there is no sign yet that the peak of the region’s outbreak has been reached.
As the pandemic continued to infect and kill large numbers of people across the continent, EU plunged into a scientific policy squabble and its finance ministers failed to agree on an exit strategy for their battered economies, while individual countries announced plans to end their lockdowns.
Finance ministers from the 19 countries that use the euro haggled into the night for 16 hours by videoconference starting Tuesday which ended without a deal. Talks will resume on Thursday.
A blistering row erupted after Mauro Ferrari quit as the head of European Research Council, EU’s top science funding agency, and attacked the bloc’s handling of the crisis. The ERC hit back with a lengthy statement accusing Ferrari of being “economical with the truth”.
France reported fewer new cases though deaths rose sharply. The total cumber of cases rose by 3,777. Deaths rose by 1,417 to 10,328 .
France’s central bank estimated its first-quarter gross domestic product to shrink 6% from previous quarter, the biggest quarterly contraction since World War 2. Similarly, experts warned that German economy, Europe’s biggest, would shrink by nearly 10% in the second quarter, twice as big as the 2008-2009 financial crisis.
