Health workers at a Madrid hospital on March 25, 2020. – CopyrightOSCAR DEL POZO/AF
The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the US reached 85,900 on Thursday, surpassing China, a tally from the John Hopkins University showed.
However, with 1,300 fatalities recorded, the US still remains far behind China (3,169) — where the virus originates — and Italy (8,215).
Italy reported 6,153 new coronavirus infections on Thursday, pushing the global total over half a million, according to a count kept by Johns Hopkins University.
France noted an aggravation of its situation, reporting 365 new deaths in one day, including a 16-year-old girl. The French death toll has reached a total of 1,696 deaths. The country, which has been under lockdown for a week, has 29,155 confirmed cases.
Spain extended its state of emergency for two more weeks to allow the government to extend stringent lockdown measures in a desperate attempt to contain the coronavirus.
Spain reported 655 new deaths in one day on Thursday bringing the death toll to 4,089. There are over 56,000 confirmed cases of the virus in the country.
Spain has surpassed China, where the pandemic began, in the overall number of COVID-19 deaths. Spain and Italy have the highest fatality rates in the global pandemic.
And on Thursday the UK announced 115 new deaths, taking its total to 578. The day before the country had confirmed the death of the deputy to the British ambassador to Hungary, Steven Dick, 37, of COVID-19.
Over 225,000 people have been fined in France for violating lockdown rules, the French Interior minister said on Thursday.
The Moody’s credit rating agency said it is forecasting an economic recession for all G20 countries in 2020, while United Nations director-general Antonio Guterres said coronavirus “threatens the whole of humanity.”
South Africa, which is on the eve of a three-week lockdown, announced on Thursday its coronavirus cases are nearing 1,000, the most cases in Africa.
India on Tuesday started implementing the world’s biggest lockdown of 1.3 billion people, following the example of a number of countries, especially in Europe, which remains the global coronavirus hotspot.
Finland, which has 880 confirmed cases of coronavirus and has reported three deaths, announced on Wednesday the lockdown of the capital Helsinki and its region, starting Friday until 19 April.
The French government published 25 decrees on Wednesday to implement new measures under the country’s “state of health emergency”, declared last week.
The measures include a €1 billion fund for small businesses and self-employed people, as well as financial aid for the travel sector, and systems put in place to pay salaries to the workers whose jobs have been stopped under the lockdown.
The French government has also published measures to temporarily adapt the French labour law to create a “real war economy”, Philippe said: businesses will be temporarily allowed to make employees work longer hours, or work nights or Sundays as needed.
“We will face a long effort, together,” the French PM Edouard Philippe told the parliament.
“The health crisis is here, but it will also become an economic and social crisis. We are only at the beginning.”
Record number of Americans apply for unemployment benefits
More than 3.2 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, according to the country’s labour department. That is more than four times the previous record which was 695,000 Americans in October of 1982, the department said.
The US now has the third most cases in the world with nearly 70,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus. The country of 327 million recorded more than 1,000 deaths according to two separate counts of the toll.
A World Health Organization spokesperson said on Tuesday that the United States had the “potential” to become the new epicentre of the pandemic, due to a “very large acceleration” in infections.
US President Trump meanwhile said he wanted to get the country “reopened” by Easter on April 12.
Russia grounds flights, delays constitutional changes
Russian government officials announced they would ground international flights from Friday except flights bringing Russians home from abroad.
Russia also delayed a vote on constitutional changes amidst the coronavirus outbreak.
President Vladimir Putin addressed the nation on Wednesday and encouraged Russians to stay at home, saying that only essential businesses such as pharmacies, stores and banks would remain open.
The authorities reported 163 new cases of the virus in Russia bringing the total to over 600 nationwide.
The constitutional vote that he delayed included a change to allow Putin to seek another presidential term.
Spanish death tolls soars as Europe remains in the grip of COVID-19
Spain is now second only to Italy in worldwide deaths from COVID-19, after it surpassed China, where the outbreak began.
On Thursday morning Spain had registered 4,089 dead.
Earlier this week, the country overtook the death toll in China which stands at 3,285. Italy, the world’s worst affected country, has an official death toll of 6,820.
Hotels in Spain have been converted into makeshift hospitals and an ice rink in the capital Madrid is being used as a morgue, as the infections and deaths continue to shoot up. On Wednesday, as well as the rise in deaths, infections also rose 20% from a day earlier to 47,610.
Italy – the hardest-hit nation in the world – has more than 69,000 infections and 6,800 deaths. Authorities are investigating if a hotly contested Champions League match in Milan in February poured rocket fuel on the crisis that is overwhelming Italian hospitals. Italian doctors are being forced to choose who will receive desperately needed ventilators and who won’t.
Both these countries, and others in Europe, are seeing their health care systems come under intense strain, with hospitals running short of critical equipment needed to treat patients and keep doctors and nurses safe. Doctors are dying in Italy and Spain says 14% of its infections are health care workers.
A Flourish chart