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July 4 (UPI) -- Spain's Catalonia region reimposed a strict lockdown on 210,000 people in one area Saturday after COVID-19 infections spiked. Catalan President Quim Torra said residents were not allowed to enter or leave Segria, an agricultural area west of Barcelona, including Lleida, a city in the west of Catalonia.
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Torra added that the lockdown began Saturday afternoon and provisions allow non-residents to leave.
On Saturday, the Catalan health department reported 155 new COVID-19 cases in Lleida in the past day, more than double the new cases announced Friday -- 60.
The Catalan region has been one of the hardest hit by the coronavirus in Spain. Since the pandemic began, official figures released Friday showed 72,860 COVID-19 cases and 6,869 deaths across the Catalan region of 7.5 million people.
Spain has reported 250,545 cases of infection and 28,385 deaths from COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins University's global tracker.
A spike in public housing towers in Melbourne, Australia, also prompted a lockdown Saturday.
Premier Daniel Andrews said there have been at least 23 new COVID-19 cases in the public housing estates in the city amid concerns that the virus had spread further.
State Deputy Chief Health Officer Annaliese van Diemen said that was not being taken "at all, lightly."
"We are extremely concerned that there are many hundreds of people in these towers who have already been exposed to the cases that we've found and possibly to cases that exist that we haven't found," van Diemen said. "The first priority here is to find every case in those towers so that we don't have an explosion of infections in a highly vulnerable community and very high rates of hospitalizations and deaths because of the background health status of a large number of people in these towers."
Victorian Public Tenants Association executive officer Mark Feenane said the virus "does not discriminate based on income or housing tenure."
"However, overcrowded living conditions assist the virus to spread," Feenane added. "We believe that if Victoria had more public housing, this would be less of an issue."
Across the Victoria state in southeast Australia, stay-at-home orders have expanded.
Australia has 8,362 cases and 104 deaths from COVID-19 to date, according to the global tracker.
Japan's capital also saw a rise in COVID-19 cases Saturday, as the Tokyo Metropolitan Government reported 131 new cases, marking the highest number since May 2 and the third day above 100.
Despite the rise in infections, Gov. Yuriko Koike said the government would continue to make efforts to reopen the economy, but urged residents to exercise caution and avoid travel beyond Tokyo's borders.
The total number of COVID-19 cases in Tokyo as of Saturday, was 6,654.
Across the country, 19,459 cases have been reported and 977 deaths, the COVID-19 global tracker shows.
Worldwide, the United States has the most cases at more than 2.8 million and most deaths at more than 129,000.
Brazil has the second-highest number at more than 1.5 million cases and more than 61,000 deaths.
Globally, the pandemic has sickened more than 11 million people and killed more than half a million.
