Washington (AFP)
The world has passed the milestone of one million people tested positive for coronavirus, and the pandemic explodes in the United States, where 1,169 deaths were recorded in 24 hours, up one third on the previous daily report.
Economies are ravaged by this scourge, as another dramatic figure shows: in one week, 6.6 million Americans lost their jobs. Half of humanity is stationary, subject to sometimes extremely strict confinement measures.
The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus infection worldwide exceeds one million on Friday, and that of deaths 52,000, according to an AFP count.
Europe is the continent most affected, but the United States is on the way to becoming the new epicenter of the pandemic, with a quarter of the cases recorded. These assessments are probably well below reality, due to the lack of sufficient screening capacity.
In the United States, the number of deaths in 24 hours has again established a record disaster: 1,169 deaths, according to the count of the American university Johns Hopkins, which refers.
- A huge increase -
This figure is a huge increase, almost a third, compared to the previous daily report (884 dead) of the same university.
In absolute numbers, this is the highest 24-hour record ever recorded in a country since the start of the pandemic. Italy however came close to a thousand dead (969) on March 27 with a population five times smaller than that of the United States.
A total of 5,926 people have died since the start of the pandemic in the United States.
Covid-19, the importance of which some officials downplayed a few weeks ago, has in many cases proven to be an appalling disease. Once cured, former patients tell of their fear of dying, like Javier Lara, 29, who found himself "in intensive care and on oxygen" in Spain, before leaving the hospital on March 23. He asked the caregivers: "Am I going to die? Get over it? They said to me:" We don't know, this virus is new. "
The social consequences are disastrous. As in the United States where the weekly requests for unemployment benefits recorded a new record, with 6.6 million new requests.
British airline British Airways has announced that it is placing 28,000 workers, or 60% of its workforce, on short-time work.
- Tragedies -
The scale of the crisis does not hide the individual tragedies: the death of a newborn child on Wednesday in the state of Connecticut has struck the spirits, the children being so far relatively spared.
The pandemic on Thursday led to the postponement of a month (in mid-August) of the convention of the Democratic Party, which must nominate its candidate for the presidential election in November against the Republican Donald Trump.
The president announced that he had undergone a new negative test on Thursday. It is the second time that it has been tested since the start of the crisis.
New York City is concentrating the concerns, with more than 1,500 dead already. As before in Italy, Spain or France, medical personnel require protective equipment.
"Soldiers do not go to war unarmed, why would medics work without protective equipment?" Thirty nurses organized Thursday a rare demonstration in front of a New York hospital, to denounce the lack of masks and gowns.
- Body influx -
In Italy, the country most bereaved by the pandemic to date, the largest crematorium in Milan has closed, overwhelmed by the influx of bodies. In Bergamo, the most affected city in the country, bodies were transported by military trucks to other regions for cremation.
In Iran (3,160 dead), where the authorities resolved at the end of March to ban all travel between cities, the president of the Parliament Ali Larijani tested positive.
Despite the containment measures, the balance sheets continue to increase: nearly 14,000 dead in Italy, 10,000 in Spain, nearly 6,000 in the United States.
In France, the death toll was increased to 5,300 dead, including nearly 900 people who died in retirement homes.
The scale of the tragedy in these four countries, which each exceeded the official death toll reported for mainland China (3.318) where the epidemic had declared, raise suspicions about the authenticity of the Chinese figures.
Beijing has lied by largely undervaluing them, affirms a confidential report of American intelligence, quoted by several parliamentarians.
- Economy or health -
Spain deplored 950 deaths in 24 hours Thursday, a new record in the country, which also registered in March more than 300,000 new job seekers.
The Italian government, under pressure to lift containment measures and revive an idle economy, is faced with the "horrible" choice of "putting the economy on standby or endangering the lives of many people", according to the American Paul Romer, 2018 Nobel Prize in Economics.
The European Commission proposed Thursday to create an instrument to guarantee up to 100 billion euros in national employment support plans.
And the World Bank has said it is ready to put on the table up to $ 160 billion over the next 15 months to help countries respond to the immediate health consequences of the pandemic and support economic recovery.
The UN General Assembly on Thursday approved by consensus a resolution calling for "international cooperation" and "multilateralism" to combat Covid-19, the first United Nations text since the outbreak of the pandemic.
In Russia, President Vladimir Putin extended the principle of days off imposed for a week until the end of the month, leaving regional authorities to fix the terms of confinement, notably in Moscow, the main home in the country.
French politicians have accused American buyers of "bidding" to buy deliveries of protective masks made in China and ordered by France. Washington denounced information "completely false", but the exchange shows how difficult it is for states and communities to obtain medical equipment.
And after several days of blockage, Florida authorized a cruise liner to dock north of Miami to disembark its passengers, some of whom are infected with coronavirus. The Zaandam has been wandering at sea for days, rejected by several ports in Latin America.
burs-cyj / cjc / plh / roc
© 2020 AFP