New York (AFP)

Still very timidly, a ray of hope began to pierce in Europe on Friday thanks to a certain slowdown in the spread of the coronavirus, which has already made more than 40,000 deaths there, but the United States and the United Kingdom were doing in the face of an explosion of the disease.

The pandemic also threatened disaster in countries at war.

After 1,200 deaths in 24 hours, an unprecedented figure in this pandemic that started in December in China, the Americans are preparing for the worst and are building field hospitals from Los Angeles to Miami or New York, with thousands of additional intensive care beds.

Ditto in the United Kingdom where a large field hospital with a potential of 4,000 beds was inaugurated Friday in London, and where the threat is such that Queen Elisabeth II, an extremely rare event, is due to deliver a speech on Sunday.

The only hope is that of a slowdown in the spread of the virus, now after weeks of almost generalized confinement.

"We are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel", hoped the Italian nurse Paolo Miranda who chronicles on his Instagram account the fight against the pandemic in his hospital in Cremona (north). The contagion, which to date has killed 14,700 people in Italy, the country most grieving by the pandemic, continues but confirms its slowdown which started about a week ago, with an increase of only 4% of cases.

In Spain too, the second most bereaved country behind Italy, where the number of deaths in 24 hours still exceeded 900, for a total of nearly 11,000 deaths, hope rests on the slowing of the rate of contagions and hospitalization , assure the authorities.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country is certainly not the most affected and has managed to avoid high mortality to date, said Friday: "The latest figures (..) as high as they are, very cautiously bring some hope. "

The restrictive measures must however be maintained, assure the health authorities.

A fortiori in France, where the daily balance sheet started to rise again Friday with 588 deaths in hospital environment for a total now of more than 6,500 deaths, retirement homes included.

Half of humanity is now subject to containment measures, sometimes very strict, with catastrophic economic and social consequences.

- Reinforced containment -

After Russia, which extended its containment measures for a month on Thursday, it is Turkey which tightened its restrictions on Friday, closing more than 30 cities including Istanbul and Ankara to car traffic for 15 days, and extending to young people the strict confinement already imposed on the over 65s.

"Across our country, people under the age of 20 ... will no longer be allowed to go out on the streets," said President Erdogan.

According to the latest AFP count, more than a million people worldwide have tested positive for the new coronavirus, a fraction of the actual number of patients, with a large number of countries testing only severe cases.

With more than half of the more than 57,000 deaths worldwide, Europe remains the most affected continent.

The UK, whose government has been criticized for managing the crisis, on Friday recorded a record 684 deaths in 24 hours and now has more than 3,600 deaths.

But the United States is fast becoming the new epicenter of the pandemic.

In 24 hours, 1,169 deaths were recorded: a huge increase of a third compared to the previous day's count (884) and the highest daily toll ever recorded in a single country.

The virus has already killed a total of nearly 7,000 people there and is expected to kill between 100,000 and 240,000, according to the White House.

In New York, passers-by on Friday wore more masks, sometimes handcrafted, scarves or bandanas, after the mayor's call to cover their faces to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

Scientists in the United States government now believe that the new coronavirus is probably transmitted by people when they speak and breathe, not just when they cough or sneeze.

But this brutal turnaround from the authorities, who had spent weeks deterring the public from wearing it, discouraged others.

"I keep hearing conflicting messages," said a passer-by, Adam Alvaro.

Just under half of pedestrians applied the order in Manhattan, according to an observation by AFP journalists.

- "The worse is yet to come -

But it is also in countries in conflict that the "worst is yet to come," warned UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

"The Covid-19 storm is now coming to all theaters of conflict," he said, citing Syria, Ukraine, Libya, Yemen, Burma and Colombia.

In China, the country from which the pandemic started in December and whose official death toll of 3,322 ended up raising suspicions of undervaluation, a moment of national meditation will be observed for three minutes Saturday at 02:00 GMT in memory of deceased people.

The drastic quarantine has started to be lifted: traffic resumes and stores reopen, but the population remains on the alert.

In Africa - where Nigerian President Mahamadou Issoufou has called for a "Marshall Plan" for the continent - and in other countries of the world dependent on imports for their food and exports to pay for them, hundreds of millions of people are threatened food shortages, the UN warned on Friday.

- "Deep recession" -

Across the world, economies and workers are the collateral victims of the virus.

Private sector activity in the eurozone fell to an all-time low in March, according to economic information firm Markit.

Unemployment is exploding everywhere. Spain registered more than 300,000 new job seekers in March.

In the United States, an additional 6.6 million people claimed unemployment benefits in the past week, double the already record figure from the previous week. And the unemployment rate rose to 4.4% in March, a record level in more than 10 years.

As for Latin America, it is entering a period of "deep recession" economic, announced Friday a specialized agency of the United Nations.

burs-ayv-elc / leo

© 2020 AFP