Spain’s coronavirus epidemic is growing on Friday with COVID-19 deaths exceeded 4,350 and confirmed cases are already 57,786. Although mortality and infection slowed, the pandemic brought the health system to the brink of collapse, with Spain fighting to protect frontline workers to provide supplies for testing and treatment.

Spain currently has the second-largest death toll in the world after Italy and has registered 4,365 deaths after another 655 people lost the battle with the virus in the last 24 hours, the health ministry said.

“Emergency services are being flooded at the moment”, said Jorge Rivera, a spokesman of the Leganes main hospital in the southern outskirts of Madrid, by phone. “In practice, the entire hospital is dedicated to combating coronavirus, both the intensive care unit and the general wards”, added he.

To ease the overload at Leganes and another hospital in Alcala de Henares, east of the capital, Doctors Without Borders said they have set up two 200-bed field hospitals to treat less severe cases.

Nurse Lidia Perera said services are “collapsing” at Madrid’s la Paz hospital and said more workers are urgently needed. “If you had told me three months ago that I would be working in these conditions in Spain, I wouldn’t have believed you. If they did [regular testing], they might end up without any workers”, added she

The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared Europe the new “epicenter of the pandemic”, with more daily deaths and cases recorded in the continent than anywhere else.