Spain's coronavirus death toll rises by 932 in a day

More than 900 people died in Spain over the past 24 hours for the second day running, government figures showed on Friday, although the rate of new infections and deaths continued to slow.

Spain has the world's second-highest death toll after Italy with the virus so far claiming 10,935 lives – 932 in the past day – from 117,710 confirmed coronavirus cases.

But health ministry figures confirm a consistent downward trend in the rate of new cases and fatalities.

The latest number show the rate of infections up by 6.8 percent, compared with 7.9 percent on Thursday and 20 percent in the middle of last week.

And the daily rise in deaths also slowed to 9.3 percent on Friday, down from 10.5 percent on Thursday, and a big drop from the 27-percent increase on March 25.

Spain and France appear to be recording a flattening of their infection curves over the past few days and are nearing or even past their peaks in daily deaths.

The crisis has hit Spain's elderly population especially hard with authorities admitting  that they are not getting access to limited breathing machines, which are being used first on healthier, younger patients. More than half of Spain's 10,935 deaths have come in the last seven days alone.

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(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and REUTERS)