New Delhi (AFP)

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, but state leaders -United States and Brazil strive instead to minimize.

After weeks of procrastination, the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games have been postponed to 2021. A decision welcomed with relief all over the world while in Italy, Spain, France and other countries, the Covid pandemic- 19 continues to cause daily hecatombs.

In the countries most affected, hospitals are on the brink of collapse, health workers exhausted and exposed to contagion for lack of masks and suitable equipment, and victims buried or cremated in haste.

"Many colleagues are crying because people are dying alone without seeing their families and we barely have time to keep them company," laments Guillen del Barrio, a nurse in a Madrid hospital saturated with patients.

In the Spanish capital, an ice rink has been transformed into a giant morgue. The exhibition halls of the Madrid Fair have been converted into a 1,500-bed field hospital, and the army has been called on to help disinfect retirement homes where the dead are dozens.

In Italy, the daily report remains nightmarish: still 743 died Tuesday. But a decrease in the number of contaminations raises timid hopes among scientists, who see in them the effectiveness of the draconian containment measures taken in this country.

India, the second most populous country in the world behind China, has just ordered in turn the containment of its 1.3 billion inhabitants from Wednesday.

"Remember that even a single step outside your home can bring serious coronavirus disease back to your home," Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose country has 519 cases of Covid-19, warned the nation in a speech. , including 10 dead.

With the confinement of India, 2.6 billion people are now called to cloister at home, according to a count made from an AFP database.

This represents more than a third of the world's population, estimated by the UN at 7.8 billion people in 2020.

According to an AFP report from official sources, more than 18,000 people have lost their lives due to this virus and more than 400,000 cases of infection have been diagnosed in 175 countries and territories.

This number of diagnosed cases, however, only reflects a fraction of the actual number of infections, with a large number of countries now testing only those cases requiring hospitalization.

- Containment: "only operational strategy" -

In Africa, Latin America and Europe, curfews, confinements, closings of businesses and travel restrictions are widespread, the majority of scientists believe that only drastic measures of this order are able to curb the disease against which no vaccine nor any proven treatment exist to date.

"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," Trump said 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.

"You can destroy a country by closing it this way," criticized the President, who said that "a severe recession or a 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 years old. So why close the schools?" he asked himself.

He accused the media of spreading "hysteria" in the face of the pandemic and claimed that Brazil was safe, he said, thanks to its warm climate and its predominantly young population.

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 the national health authorities.

© 2020 AFP