Spain calls in its army to fight COVID-19 resurgence

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Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced on Tuesday he was making the army available to help regions fight a new explosion of coronavirus cases.

"The Spanish government will provide the regions with the strength of the armed forces to carry out the tracing" of cases, he said during a televised address, specifying that 2,000 soldiers would be deployed for this purpose.

Sanchez said the evolution of the pandemic in Spain is "worrying" but stressed it is still far from its height in mid-March.

Spain imposed one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe at that time, and there have remained nationwide and local restrictions as the country continued to battle new COVID-19 cases.

Regions will be able to ask the central government to apply a state of alert in their territories as well, Sanchez added.

"We cannot allow the pandemic to take control of our lives again...we must take control, break this second curve," he said.

He also asked people to download an app called RadarCovid to facilitate the work of tracking and tracing cases.

There have been more than 405,000 cases confirmed in the country, as well as nearly 29,000 deaths, according to a Johns Hopkins University tally.