After five weeks of strict home confinement, Spain will allow kids to play outside and 'get some fresh air'
- Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced that he would be allowing children to leave their homes for the first time since the country went on lockdown so they can play outside and "get some fresh air."
- Sánchez plans to ease coronavirus restrictions on children beginning on April 27, but noted it would be "limited and subject to conditions to avoid contagion."
- Spain's eight million children have been confined to their residences since March 14.
- Children's advocates and Barcelona's mayor raised concerns over the negative impacts of confinement on children.
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Spain's eight million children have been confined in their homes since the country implemented strict lockdown measures on March 14 in efforts of curbing the novel coronavirus.
After clamorous calls to allow children outside to play, Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced that he would ease Spain's restrictions for kids, the BBC reported.
"The proposal is that starting from 27 April they have the opportunity to leave their homes and for a while in the day they get to enjoy fresh air," Sánchez announced in a televised news briefing on Saturday.
Beginning on April 27, children will finally be allowed out of their homes, but Sánchez emphasized it would have to be "limited and subject to conditions to avoid contagion." Sánchez did not provide any details on how long the restrictions would be eased or organized in the televised news conference Saturday.
Spain has the second-highest number of COVID-19 cases globally, with over 195,000 infections and over 20,000 deaths in the country, according to data from John Hopkins. The country's daily new cases have slowed in the past couple weeks, reporting only 3,577 new cases on April 18 — at the country's peak, health officials reported as many as 8,271 a day, according to data from Worldometer.
Although schools and daycares for adolescents all over the world have closed in efforts to curb the spread of the virus, Spain by far has one of the strictest lockdown measures for children.
While some countries have age restrictions on children who can go outside and others, including Italy, allow children out of their homes if accompanied by a parent. Spain is the only country where children cannot leave home at all — they've been kept inside for five weeks.
The announcement came after opposition leaders, Barcelona's mayor, and children's advocates made clamorous calls to free children from lockdown, raising concerns about the negative impacts confinement can have on children's development.
Spain's branch of Save the Children, the leading humanitarian organization for children, called for children to be allowed outside near their homes for an hour each day as "one of the most vulnerable populations during this prolonged confinement," the BBC reported.
A paper published by The Lancet on mitigating the effects of home confinement on children suggested that restrictive lockdowns during a disease outbreak would likely have a negative impact on children's physical and mental health, particularly without outdoor activities and interaction with friends their age during the outbreak.
"These children need to get out. Wait no more: Free our children!" Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau wrote on Facebook, who is the mother of two young children.
In her pleas to Sánchez, Colau said she worried about the "psychological and emotional health" of her children: "Week after week, they fight each other more every day, they have fits of sadness, anger," she wrote, BBC reported.
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