More than a third of humanity is forced to stay at home on Wednesday after India's decision to confine its 1.3 billion inhabitants to the coronavirus that is wreaking havoc around the world. India is the second most populous country in the world after China. "Remember that even a single step outside your home can bring severe coronavirus disease back into your home," Prime Minister Narendra Modi warned the nation in a 519-case report on Covid-19 , including 10 dead.
With the confinement of India, 2.6 billion people are now called to cloister at home. This represents more than a third of the world's population, estimated by the UN at 7.8 billion people in 2020. In Africa, Latin America and Europe, curfews, confinements, closings of businesses and travel restrictions are spreading, the majority of scientists judging that only drastic measures of this order are able to curb the disease against which no vaccine or any proven treatment exists to date.
"Only operational strategy"
"Containment is currently the only truly operational strategy," said the French Scientific Council on Covid-19 on Tuesday, which deemed it "essential" to extend this measure in force in the country for more than a week by several weeks. .
US President Donald Trump and his Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaro disagree. "You have to go back to work, much sooner than people think," said Donald Trump on Fox News. The United States recorded more than 700 deaths and 53,000 officially reported cases of Covid-19 on Tuesday, according to a count by Johns Hopkins University, which reports. About 40% of the American population is homebound or about to be homebound, with restrictions varying from state to state.
China loosens the noose
"You can destroy a country by closing it this way," criticized the American president, according to whom a "serious recession or depression" could kill more people than the epidemic, especially if the economic crisis were to lead to "suicides." by thousands ". In Brazil, where there are 2,201 cases of Covid-19 and 46 deaths, the deficiencies of the healthcare system, the poverty and the insanitary conditions in which a large part of the population lives threaten to worsen the epidemic in the first Latin American economy.
But far-right president Jair Bolsonaro compared the measures to contain and close shops and public services taken by several states and municipalities to a "scorched earth" policy. "We must maintain jobs and preserve the supply of families," he said in a speech to the nation. “The risk group is that of people over 60. So why close the schools? He asked himself.
In China, the drastic restrictions imposed for several months in Hubei province, epicenter of the pandemic, were lifted on Wednesday. No case of local contamination was detected in 24 hours in the country, but 47 cases "imported" from abroad were identified during this period, according to national health authorities.
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