Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo was hospitalized on Sunday with a respiratory infection and is awaiting coronavirus test results, the government said in a statement Monday.
"The deputy Prime Minister went to a hospital yesterday afternoon and after medical tests were carried out doctors decided she had to remain there to receive treatment for a respiratory infection," the statement said.
Calvo, born in 1957, was tested for coronavirus and the results will be released as soon as they are known, the statement added.
Spain's death toll tops 2,000
The coronavirus death toll in Spain surged to 2,182 after 462 people died within 24 hours, the health ministry said Monday.
The death rate showed a 27% increase on the figures released a day earlier, with the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 rising to 33,089 in Spain, one of the worst-hit countries in the world after China and Italy.
Despite an unprecedented national lockdown which was put in place on March 14, the number of deaths and infections has spiraled in Spain, with the figures growing as the country steps up its capacity for testing.
And the lockdown, which was initially put in place for two weeks, will be extended until April 11 to try to curb the spread, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said, in a measure which will be put to parliament on Tuesday.
The rise in infections in this country of 46 million people has brought Spain's health care system to the brink of collapse, particularly in Madrid, the worst-hit area, which has registered 10,575 cases, and where 1,263 people have died, accounting for 58% of the national death toll.
Some 3,910 health care workers have tested positive for the virus, or around 12% of those infected, the health ministry's emergencies coordinator Fernando Simon said.
Officials have repeatedly warned that the number of deaths and infections would continue to rise this week and that the worst was yet to come.
