More than 100,000 doses of Pfizer vaccine could have been wasted

The telegraph

Spain blanketed in heavy snowfall as record-breaking snowstorm brings Madrid to a halt

A persistent snowstorm has blanketed large parts of Spain with record levels of snowfall for 50 years, disrupting traffic and leaving thousands trapped in cars or at stations and airports that have suspended all services as the snow continued to fall on Saturday. The first official victims of Storm Filomena were a man and a woman whose bodies were found by emergency services in the Andalusia region after their car was washed away by a flooded river near the town of Fuengirola. Ten provinces in central Spain were on their highest alert, including the capital, Madrid, where authorities activated the red warning for the first time and called on the military to save people from vehicles trapped on everything from small roads to major city traffic arteries. . Sandra Morena, who was trapped Friday night while commuting for her night shift as a security guard at a shopping center, arrived home, on foot, after an emergency unit from the the army helped her on Saturday morning. “It usually takes me 15 minutes but this time it was 12 hours of freezing, without food or water, crying with other people because we didn’t know how we were going to get out of there,” said Morena, 22. years. can be very beautiful but spending the night trapped in a car because of it is no fun, ”she added. The National Meteorological Agency (Aemet) had warned that some areas would receive more than 24 hours of continuous snowfall due to the strange combination of a stagnant cold air mass over the Iberian Peninsula and the onset of the storm warmer southern Filomena. Forecasts of up to 20 centimeters (almost 8 inches) of snow have been eclipsed by the accumulation of more than 50 centimeters, even in the urban center of Madrid. As of 7 a.m. on Saturday, Aemet had recorded a snowfall of 33 liters per square meter over 24 hours in Madrid, which had not been seen since 1971. The storm is expected to move north-east throughout Saturday, the agency said. Carlos Novillo, head of the Madrid emergency agency, said more than 1,000 vehicles were trapped, mostly on the city’s ring road and on the main highway that leads from the capital to the south, to the regions from Castilla La Mancha and Andalusia. “The situation remains at high risk. It is a very complex phenomenon and a critical situation,” Novillo said Saturday morning in a message posted on social networks. “We ask all those who remain trapped to be patient, we will respond to you,” he added.