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Coronavirus: New cases force 160,000 back into localised lockdown in Spain

Healthcare workers are staffing a field hospital in the city

Around 160,000 people in a Spanish city have been ordered back into lockdown for 15 days after a surge in new coronavirus cases.

Residents in Lleida, which is located about 110 miles west of Barcelona, will only be allowed to leave their homes to travel to work or to buy essential supplies.

Hotels, restaurants and bars have been forced to close again and will only be allowed to continue trading through customer collections or home delivery.

The regional government's stay-at-home order was finally approved by a judge on Wednesday, after several days of legal wrangling over how to deal with local coronavirus outbreaks.

The Catalonian government had wanted to put the Lleida area into lockdown sooner - but they were unable to get the restrictions approved.

Catalan regional president Quim Torra said: "The maximum priority of (the Catalan) government is people's health and life and there cannot be any judicial interference that complicates the collective fight against the pandemic."

Spain's national lockdown ended on 21 June, but it has since seen more than 170 clusters of COVID-19 spring up, leading to localised lockdown measures like the one seen in Leicester in the UK.

Tensions are said to be especially high in Spain's northeastern region of Catalonia, because the 7.5 million people who live in the area have seen some of the most significant spikes in fresh cases.

The regional Catalan government is also planning to appeal a ruling by a judge refusing to restrict gatherings to 10 people in three neighbourhoods in the Barcelona suburb of L'Hospitalet.

Earlier this month, more than 200,000 people in northeast Spain were put back into lockdown after fresh coronavirus outbreaks in the county of Segria, which includes Lleida.

People were told not to leave the area - but the restrictions did not order them to remain confined to their homes.

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Elsewhere, 70,000 residents in La Marina were ordered to stay in Spain's northwest after reports of an upsurge in coronavirus cases in the Galicia region.

Spain has been one of the European countries worst hit by the pandemic, with 28,409 deaths of people with the coronavirus and 256,619 confirmed cases, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University.