Spain first in western Europe to hit 1 million virus cases

Spain has become first country in western Europe to accumulate more than 1 million confirmed COVID-19 infections as nation of 47 million struggles to contain a resurgence of virus.

Spain’s health ministry said Wednesday that its accumulative case load since start of pandemic reached 1,005,295 after reporting 16,973 more cases in past 24 hours.

ministry attributes 34,366 deaths to COVID-19. Experts say real numbers of infections and deaths are probably much higher because insufficient testing, asymptomatic cases and or issues impede authorities from capturing true scale of outbreak.