Brussels (AFP)
World leaders sought to overcome their divisions on Thursday to provide concerted responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, which has officially killed more than 90,000 people worldwide and threatens the planet with unprecedented economic disaster.
The boss of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva, warned: this pandemic will have "the worst economic consequences since the Great Depression" in 1929.
While more than half of humanity is placed in quarantine, "entire sectors" of the economy are at a standstill, notes the World Trade Organization (WTO), and half a billion people are at risk of fall into poverty, according to the NGO Oxfam.
- Ugandan tutorial -
In the very prosperous California, on the west coast of the United States, the coronavirus decimates employment: filming at a standstill in Hollywood, deserted stadiums, closed bars ... "nobody has a job (...) panic, "laments Zach Machtem, a 32-year-old sound engineer, summing up the anxiety of some 17 million Americans who have lost their jobs because of the pandemic.
The US Central Bank struck a blow on Thursday by announcing $ 2.3 trillion in new loans to support the economy.
A first in more than a quarter of a century, sub-Saharan Africa, particularly exposed, should enter into recession in 2020, warned the World Bank.
On the black continent precisely, barely out of a first quarantine period against coronavirus, the president of Botswana Mokgweetsi Masisi will be forced to return there for two more weeks, this time in the company of all the 63 deputies of the country, after having rubbed shoulders with a nurse infected with Covid-19 disease who came ... submit them to a screening test.
For his part, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, 75, released a video on Thursday in which he shows how to keep in shape at home, after having prohibited his confined citizens from exercising outdoors.
"So you start by warming up," explains the 75-year-old former guerrilla, learnedly, barefoot and dressed in a gray tracksuit, starting to run quietly from one end of his office to the other.
- "Flatten" the curve -
Despite the confinement, the coronavirus continues its relentless advance. Thursday late afternoon, the balance sheet of the pandemic stood at 90,938 deaths, crossing a new symbolic ceiling, according to a balance sheet established by AFP from official sources.
With 18,279 deaths, Italy is still the country with the most victims in the world, followed by Spain (15,238), the United States (15,000) and France, which has passed the 12,000 death mark.
The United States is the country most affected in number of cases (432,132). New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a new record for the number of deaths in his state - 799 in 24 hours - but hospitalizations have never been lower, which says the same governor that "we are flattening the curve".
Caregivers in all countries continue to pay a heavy price for the pandemic: a hundred doctors have died in Italy. But they continue their heavy task with often an incredible dedication: "I am not afraid of being infected, I am just afraid of not being able to do all that I have to do", confides a nun and doctor who battle against the pandemic in Lombardy.
In Britain, an additional 881 deaths have been reported in 24 hours, while confinement should be extended. The health of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in intensive care since Sunday after being contaminated with Covid-19, "continues to improve" according to Downing Street.
The WHO has warned against any temptation to relax confinement early while Spain, Italy and France note a downward trend in hospital pressure. Countries such as Austria, Denmark, Norway, Greece and the Czech Republic have announced that restrictions will soon be lifted.
- Turkish smartphones -
The Turkish authorities have announced for their part that they will monitor this week the movements of infected people and their relatives through a smartphone application, this to curb the epidemic that is accelerating in Turkey.
This announcement comes at a time when several European countries are considering how to use smartphones to fight Covid-19 disease without invading privacy.
On the diplomatic scene, the UN Security Council will try on Thursday to overcome its divisions, notably Sino-American, during a videoconference meeting devoted to Covid-19.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres will try to unify a deeply divided body. It is "not the time" for criticism, he argued, but that of "solidarity", when US President Donald Trump strongly challenged the WHO for its management of the crisis and a supposed pro-Chinese prism.
The American administration renewed its charges against the UN agency on Thursday, accusing it of having "privileged politics over public health". For Washington, China's lack of transparency has also lost "precious time to the world".
EU countries must for their part try again on Thursday to agree on a concerted economic response, after the failure on Wednesday of a first marathon meeting.
But deep divisions continue to oppose the countries of the South of the continent to Germany and the Netherlands, hostile to any pooling of public debts.
- Bulgarian faith "protects" -
Hundreds of millions of confined Christians are preparing to celebrate Easter in unprecedented conditions. Same punishment for Jews with Passover.
It is thus without the presence of the faithful that Pope Francis will celebrate Mass at the Last Supper - without the traditional washing of the feet - a highlight of the liturgical year.
The authorities of several countries are on the alert for this holiday which traditionally gives rise to family reunions. As in Ireland, where roadblocks have been put in place to avoid any breach of containment. Or in Spain: the faithful are content with retransmissions from previous years of the very popular processions of the Passion of Christ.
In Bulgaria on the other hand, the orthodox churches will remain open, because it seems "the faith protects" and "the infection cannot be transmitted in a church", according to the spokesman of the Bulgarian Synod, the Metropolitan Gavraïl.
Perhaps a side effect of Covid-19, cat and dog meats were excluded for the first time by Beijing from an official list of edible animals consumed on Chinese territory. This decision comes after the ban in February on the trade and consumption of wild animals, when a possible spread of the coronavirus is suspected after the human consumption of pangolin or bats.
© 2020 AFP