Covid-19 pandemic ‘accelerating’
The new coronavirus pandemic is clearly "accelerating", the World Health Organization warned yesterday, but said it was still possible to "change the trajectory" of the outbreak.
The remarks came as the number of deaths soared past 15,000, with more than 350,000 people infected worldwide, according to a tally compiled by AFP from official sources.
"The pandemic is accelerating," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told journalists in a virtual news briefing.
He said it took 67 days from the beginning of the outbreak in China in late December for the virus to infect the first 100,000 people worldwide.
In comparison, it took 11 days for the second 100,000 cases and just four days for the third 100,000 cases, he said.
The number of cases is believed to represent only a fraction of the true number of infections, with many countries only testing the most severe cases in need of hospitalisation.
"We are not helpless bystanders. We can change the trajectory of this pandemic," Tedros said.
The WHO chief acknowledged that a number of countries were struggling to take more aggressive measures due to a lack of resources and access to tests.
Meanwhile, Norway yesterday said the United Nations would create a fund to prevent the spread of coronavirus and support the treatment of patients worldwide, reports Reuters.
The purpose of the fund is to assist developing countries with weak health systems in addressing the crisis as well as to tackle the long-term consequences. The UN could make a formal announcement this week.
Norway, which suggested the fund, has not committed how much money it would put into the initiative, similar to a 2014 United Nations Ebola Response Fund.
"We want to make sure that the efforts are as unified as possible and as early as possible so that we can answer up to the demands that countries will have, especially the poorest countries," Norwegian Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soereide told Reuters.
Italy has suffered the world's deadliest outbreak of the respiratory pandemic with at least 6,078 people dead as of yesterday. European nations continued to choke people movement, with Greece yesterday morning to follow Italy, Spain and France in imposing a nationwide lockdown.
GLOBAL EFFORTS RAMPED UP
Global emergency efforts to slow the coronavirus pandemic ramped up yesterday with more nations and cities imposing extraordinary lockdowns.
From Germany banning gatherings of more than two people, New Zealand announcing a four-week lockdown and Hong Kong shutting its borders to all non-residents, the new round of containment efforts highlighted a deepening sense of panic around the world.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday announced the ban on gatherings of more than two people. She did so while in quarantine herself because she had met an infected doctor.
The Tokyo Olympics slated for July also looked increasingly likely to be postponed, with Canada announcing it would not send athletes to Japan then and Australia saying it was preparing for a one-year delay.
In India, streets were deserted in the capital yesterday and office buildings shuttered as a lockdown to halt the spread of the coronavirus began. Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged people to stay at home and save themselves.
India has reported 415 cases of the coronavirus and seven deaths but health experts have warned that a big jump could be imminent, which would overwhelm the underfunded and crumbling public health infrastructure.
Saudi Arabia's King Salman has announced a nationwide dusk-to-dawn curfew from yesterday in a bid to limit the spread of coronavirus, the latest in a series of restrictions.
In the United States, President Donald Trump ordered thousands of emergency hospital beds to be set up at coronavirus hotspots as a trillion-dollar economic rescue package crashed in the Senate.
"We're at war, in a true sense we're at war," Trump said.
POPE PLEA
Police patrolled the deserted streets of Rome on the weekend, while checks were carried out on Italian beaches after local officials complained people were defying isolation orders by catching sometime in the sun.
In his weekly prayer, streamed online to avoid attracting crowds, the Pope urged all Italians to follow isolation measures "for the good of us all."
Spanish prime minister said he would ask parliament to extend a 15-day state of emergency, which bars people from leaving home unless absolutely essential, until April 11.
Spain recorded close to 434 new fatalities yesterday, bringing the total to 2,206, suggesting the lockdown was failing to be effective. Opera star Placido Domingo said he had tested positive.
Residents across France, where the death toll jumped to 674, remained shut in their homes.
A curfew was imposed in some regions and the mayor of Paris called for even more drastic confinement measures in a city under lockdown.
Britain inched towards similar measures as Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned the country was a couple of weeks behind registering similar numbers to Italy.
Iran yesterday announced 127 new deaths, raising the official toll to 1,812 in one of the worst hit countries along with Italy, Spain and China.
Pakistan has reported 873 confirmed infections, and six deaths from the virus.
GREAT DEPRESSION FEARS
In the United States, more than a third of Americans were under various forms of lockdown, including in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, but the number of infections in the country has continued to climb.
Highlighting the desperation inside the world's biggest economy, the mayor of New York said his city was just 10 days away from running out of ventilators.
And a trillion-dollar Senate proposal to revive the US economy crashed Sunday after receiving zero support from Democrats, further traumatising investors who are watching stock markets implode worldwide.
Asian markets were hammered yesterday, and European stocks followed with a drop of four percent at the open, as they absorbed the failed US stimulus effort and the barrage of other bad news from across the world.
"This is the biggest economic shock our nation has faced in generations," Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said as he warned the pandemic could lead to a crisis akin to the 1930s Great Depression.
The virus emerged in China late last year, after first being detected at a market that sold wild animals for human consumption in the central city of Wuhan.
China has since sought to sow doubts over whether the virus began in Wuhan, while portraying itself as a saviour in the global fight and a role model for quarantines.
China yesterday reported no new local cases of the virus, but confirmed another 39 infections from overseas and nine deaths.
South Korea reported its lowest number of cases and the extended downward trend in daily infections since the peak on February 29 has boosted hopes that Asia's largest outbreak outside China may be abating, reports Reuters.
There are fears across Asia of "imported" cases from Europe and other hotspots.
New Zealand has yet to be hit hard but Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern yesterday announced a four-week lockdown to prevent a Europe-style crisis.
"The worst-case scenario is simply intolerable," Ardern said. "It would represent the greatest loss of New Zealand lives in our history and I will not take that chance."
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