Spanish PM Sanchez to extend lockdown a final time to June 21

FILE PHOOT: People queue maintaining social distancing as they volunteer to be tested at a temporary testing station where the city council is providing free tests for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) to residents, in Torrejon de Ardoz, Spain, May 29, 2020. REUTERS/Susana Vera

BARCELONA (Reuters) - Spain's prime minister said on Sunday the country needed 15 more days of lockdown until June 21 "to finish with the pandemic once and for all", and he would ask parliament to approve a final two-week extension to the stay home rule.

"We have almost achieved what we set out to do," Pedro Sanchez told a press conference, as he expressed his intense relief that the number of new cases of COVID-19 in Spain, one of the nations hardest-hit by the virus, had fallen dramatically.