Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has offered officials running the country's 17 regions help from the military to conduct coronavirus contact tracing.
He has pledged to declare regional emergency orders if the expansion of the pandemic continues, facilitating regional officials' ability to issue lockdowns and restrict mobility.
Sánchez says the infection rate is "preoccupying" but called it "far from the situation in mid-March," when the government imposed a state of emergency.
Spain is grappling to control transmission of the virus, with a new wave hitting the country only days before the opening of the school year.
Sánchez encouraged Spaniards to download a contact-tracing mobile app that the government is rolling out.
More than 400,000 people have been infected since the onset of the epidemic and at least 28,872 have died from the coronavirus. However, the figure doesn't capture many who died without being tested.
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