The COVID-19 pandemic has claimed more than 30,000 lives in Europe alone, a global tally showed yesterday, in what the head of the UN has described as humanity’s worst crisis since World War II.
Italy and Spain bore the brunt of the crisis, accounting for three in every four deaths on the continent, as the grim tally hit another milestone even though half of the planet’s population is already under some form of lockdown in a battle to halt contagion.
Spain reported a record 864 deaths in 24 hours, pushing the nation’s number of fatalities past 9,000.
Photo: AFP
The toll is only dwarfed by Italy, where the virus has killed nearly 12,500 people.
Since emerging in China last year, COVID-19 has spread across the globe claiming more than 43,000 lives and infecting more than 860,000 people, data showed.
US President Donald Trump has warned of a “very, very painful two weeks” as the nation registered its deadliest 24 hours of what he called a “plague.”
In a scramble to halt the contagion, governments have shut schools and shops, and ordered millions of people to work from home.
Cancelations of key events have swept both the sports and cultural worlds, with Edinburgh’s arts festivals the latest to be scrapped.
For UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the extraordinary upheaval spurred by the coronavirus presents a real danger to the relative peace the world has seen over the past few decades.
The pandemic “represents a threat to everybody in the world and ... an economic impact that will bring a recession that probably has no parallel in the recent past,” Guterres said.
“The combination of the two facts, and the risk that it contributes to enhanced instability, enhanced unrest and enhanced conflict, are things that make us believe that this is the most challenging crisis we have faced since the Second World War,” he said.
With most business activity grinding to a halt for an undetermined period, scenes of economic desperation and unrest were emerging across the globe.
In Italy, lines were lengthening at soup kitchens, while some supermarkets were reportedly pillaged.
Half a million more people now need help to afford meals, Italy’s biggest agriculture sector union said, adding to the 2.7 million already in need last year.
“Usually we serve 152,525 people, but now we’ve 70,000 more requests,” said Roberto Tuorto, who runs a food aid association.
The focus is now turning to how asymptomatic cases could be fueling the spread.
China yesterday said that it has more than 1,300 asymptomatic cases, the first time it has released such data following public concern over people who have tested positive, but are not showing symptoms.
Experts agree that asymptomatic patients are likely to be infectious, but it remains unknown how responsible they are for spreading the coronavirus.
Germany and France were ramping up testing of the population to establish how many already have immunity.
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