Madrid (AFP)
Spain on Wednesday became the second country most affected in death toll by the Covid-19 disease pandemic, whose expansion "threatens all of humanity", according to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
More than three billion people, or more than a third of humanity (evaluated by the UN at 7.8 billion people in 2020) are now called to remain confined, according to an AFP count.
A compulsory measure in the majority of cases, with serious economic and social consequences.
For their part, the IMF and the World Bank have called on bilateral creditors to freeze the debt payments of the poorest countries.
In total more than 19,000 people have died worldwide due to this virus and more than 420,000 have been infected.
It's "worse than a war," says Orlando Gualdi, the mayor of Vertova, near Bergamo in northern Italy, a village where the virus has killed more people than the Second World War.
With 6,800 deaths, Italy remains the most affected country, now followed by Spain, where the total number of deaths - 3,434 - exceeded Wednesday that in China (3,281), cradle of the epidemic.
As in the other most affected European countries, Spanish hospitals are on the brink of collapse, health workers exhausted and exposed to contagion for lack of masks and suitable equipment.
Spain will therefore buy $ 432 million in sanitary equipment - masks, gloves, respirators, tests ... - from China, where the disease has slowed its progression considerably.
"Many colleagues are crying because people are dying alone without seeing their families and we barely have time to keep them company," said Guillen del Barrio, a nurse at a saturated hospital in Madrid.
France is going to set up an "air bridge" with China to bring in the millions of protective masks which the country also lacks.
- "Sanitary bomb" -
The second most populous country in the world behind China, India - 1.3 billion inhabitants - in turn entered containment on Wednesday. 519 cases, including 10 fatalities, have been recorded there.
In the empty streets of New Delhi, the chirping of birds has replaced the usual cacophony of horns and shouts. In Bombay, a vegetable merchant, Rafiq Ansari, is worried about future "shortages" because it is "more and more difficult to obtain supplies".
Colombia and its 48 million inhabitants also entered compulsory general confinement on Wednesday.
And Iran, one of the countries most affected with 2,077 deaths counted, is preparing to ban, by Friday, traffic between the cities of the country.
In Saudi Arabia, Ryad and the two holy cities of Medina and Mecca are now under quarantine and the curfew already in force has been extended.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, for his part, decreed next week unemployed and called on the population to "stay at home", without however ordering it. He also postponed a popular vote scheduled for April on a constitutional reform. Two first deaths were announced Wednesday in Russia.
But confinement is often complicated to implement. As in the Moria migrant camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, the largest in Europe, the pandemic raised fears of a "health bomb".
"We were told not to leave our tents and not to gather in groups, but it is impossible in Moria," said a Somali migrant, Ibrahim Mohament Hussein.
In China, however, where the number of new local contaminations has been close to zero in recent days, the drastic restrictions imposed for months in Hubei province, epicenter of the pandemic, were lifted on Wednesday, except in the regional capital Wuhan.
This caused traffic jams and a rush on trains and coaches.
- "corona bonds" -
In an attempt to stem the economic ravages of the pandemic, the White House and the United States Senate have reached an agreement on a plan to mobilize $ 2,000 billion in support of the world's largest economy.
The announcement briefly revived the stock markets in Asia, Europe and then New York on Wednesday. But the European stock markets ended the session in dispersed order while Wall Street went back into the red.
Germany has adopted an arsenal of measures representing almost 1.1 trillion euros to support businesses, workers and the healthcare system.
The leaders of nine EU countries, including Frenchman Emmanuel Macron and Italian Giuseppe Conte, have called for the creation of "corona bonds", a "common debt instrument issued by a European institution", in order to have significant funds in the face of the health crisis.
In poor countries, the most precarious are affected, and entire sectors are threatened.
In Kenya, for example, exports of roses to Europe are collapsing, threatening to ruin a promising sector. "It's so sad. It's like throwing money on the ground," laments Sarah, a Kenyan horticultural worker in front of armfuls of gorgeous flowers sent to the landfill.
In Africa, the Covid-19 disease has also officially reached Mali and Libya, two countries where the war still heightens the concern aroused by the limits of health systems faced with the progressive emergence of the disease.
The UN is also concerned that the virus is wreaking havoc in prisons and calling for the release of detainees around the world.
Rare positive effect of confinement: air pollution is decreasing in Italy, a phenomenon that is also found in the rest of Europe, according to the European Environment Agency.
bur-roc-cr-ayv / sg
© 2020 AFP