MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Madrid requests the Army's help to fight the surge of coronavirus in the capital

“We need help from the army for disinfection ... and to strengthen local police and law enforcement,” Isabel Diaz Ayuso said after meeting President Pedro Sanchez

Madrid's regional government chief requested the army's help on Monday in fighting the coronavirus surge in the Spanish capital where local authorities ordered a partial lockdown of some poorer districts, prompting protests.

At the height of the first wave of the pandemic in March-April, Spain deployed thousands of troops to help civilian authorities contain the outbreak. A recent spike in infections, peaking at over 10,000 per day, took cumulative cases above 670,000 as of Monday, the highest in Western Europe, while the number of deaths from the COVID-19 respiratory disease in Spain stood at 30,663.

“We need help from the army for disinfection ... and to strengthen local police and law enforcement,” president of the Madrid community Isabel Diaz Ayuso told a news briefing after meeting Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in an attempt to reduce contagion in Spain's worst-hit region.

She also requested that makeshift hospitals be set up again, about three months after they were decommissioned when Spain emerged from its strict lockdown having reduced contagion rates.

Sanchez said the central and regional governments would determine the size of the military and police reinforcements at a meeting, the first of a series of meetings on tackling the situation in the capital region.

Meanwhile, residents in the southern district of Vallecas, one of the areas where a partial lockdown took effect on Monday, were upset but resigned to the curbs as police stopped cars getting in and out of the neighborhood.

Ayuso's government had ordered mobility restrictions in areas where a total of 850,000 people live, sparking discrimination complaints and protests. Madrid authorities said they had chosen those areas because COVID-19 transmission levels there exceeded 1,000 per 100,000 people.

But some residents complained that the measures, which allow people to go to work or school, failed to address the problem of an overcrowded transport system where the virus could spread fast.