Latest on the spread of the coronavirus around the world

[webfact]

Latest on the spread of the coronavirus around the world

 

Members of the Spanish army adjust their protective suits as they prepare to enter an ice rink, being used as a morgue, during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Madrid, Spain, March 26, 2020. REUTERS/Susana Vera

 

(Reuters) - Leaders of the Group of 20 major economies pledged to inject $5 trillion in fiscal spending into the global economy to blunt the economic impact of the coronavirus and "do whatever it takes to overcome the pandemic."

 

DEATHS, INFECTIONS

** Almost 489,000 people have been infected globally and over 22,000 have died, according to a Reuters tally.

 

** For an interactive graphic tracking the global spread, open https://tmsnrt.rs/3aIRuz7 in an external browser.

 

EUROPE

** The coronavirus death toll in Italy rose by 662 to 8,165 on Thursday.

 

** The number of cases in Italy's northern region of Lombardy increased by some 2,500, a steeper increase than in previous days.

 

** Spain extended its lockdown to at least April 12, as the death toll rose to 4,089.

 

** German hospitals with spare capacity will take in at least 47 coronavirus patients from Italy in a sign of European solidarity.

 

** Another 115 people have died in the United Kingdom after testing positive for the coronavirus, bringing the total number of deaths to 578.

 

** Britain has placed an emergency order of 10,000 ventilators from Dyson.

 

** Switzerland's infections topped 10,000 as the government pumped money into the economy and army medical units helped hospitals handle the spreading epidemic.

 

** President Vladimir Putin said he hoped Russia would defeat the virus in two to three months, as authorities suspended international flights, ordered most shops in the capital to shut and halted some church services.

 

** In Lisbon, a "drive-thru" clinic is performing five-minute swab tests through car windows on people with symptoms, as Portuguese authorities ramp up testing facilities.

 

** Slovakia aims to sharply increase daily testing in the next few weeks.

 

AMERICAS

** As the coronavirus pandemic's U.S. death toll raced past 1,000 people, hospitals and government authorities in New York, New Orleans and other hot spots grappled with a surge in cases and a dire shortage of supplies, staff and sick beds.

 

** Americans should receive cash payments within three weeks, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said.

 

** Canada on Thursday attacked a U.S. proposal to deploy troops along the undefended joint border to help fight the spread of coronavirus.

 

** Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Thursday urged Mexicans in the United States to avoid visiting Mexico except in emergencies.

 

** Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Thursday exempted churches from coronavirus lockdowns by classifying religious activity as an essential service.

 

ASIA AND THE PACIFIC

** Japan banned entry from 21 European countries and Iran, and set up a new crisis task force.

 

** China ordered airlines to sharply cut the number of flights in and out of the country as Beijing worries that travellers from overseas could reignite the outbreak.

 

** India's death toll from the coronavirus rose by six to 16 in the last 24 hours.

 

** South Korea warned that it will deport foreigners while its citizens could face jail if they violate self-quarantine rules after a surge in imported cases.

 

** Armenia and Kazakhstan reported their first deaths on Thursday.

 

** Australia entered 4,000 healthcare workers into a trial to see if a century-old vaccine for tuberculosis can fight off the new coronavirus.

 

** New Zealand started a one-month compulsory lockdown, with warnings from authorities to stay at home or face big fines and even jail.

 

MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

** About half of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa still have a "narrowing" opportunity to curb the spread of the virus, the regional head of the World Health Organisation said.

 

** Turkey could order the public to stay at home if infections continue to spread, the government said as it clamped down further on medical equipment leaving the country.

 

** Iran started an intercity travel ban, a day after Tehran warned the country might face a second outbreak. Iran has reported 2,234 deaths and 29,406 infections so far.

 

** Lebanon will begin an overnight shutdown from 7 p.m. to 5 a.m., as it steps up measures to combat the virus.

 

** The United Arab Emirates will impose overnight curfews as a temporary measure this weekend, when it will carry out a nationwide disinfection campaign.

 

** Qatar signed agreements to increase its strategic food stuff reserves.

 

** Saudi Arabia has released 250 foreign detainees held on non-violent immigration and residency offences.

 

** The number of coronavirus cases in South Africa jumped to more than 900 on Thursday and President Cyril Ramaphosa called for richer countries to help African nations deal with the economic fallout.

 

ECONOMIC FALLOUT

** A Wall Street rally powered global gains in stocks despite a record number of new unemployment filings in the United States, as traders focused on the Senate's passage of the relief bill and the possibility of more stimulus to come. [MKTS/GLOB]

 

** The number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits surged to a record of more than 3 million last week.

 

** The United States "may well be in recession" but progress in controlling the outbreak will determine when the economy can fully reopen, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said.

 

** India announced a $22.6 billion stimulus plan that provides direct cash transfers and food security measures to millions of poor people hit by a nationwide lockdown.

 

** China is implementing $344 billion of mainly fiscal measures in its fight against the outbreak.

 

** The African Development Bank (AfDB) sold a record $3 billion debt issue on Thursday.

 

** South Korean consumers turned the most pessimistic in more than a decade in March, a central bank survey found on Friday.

 

** Japan's government offered its bleakest assessment on the economy in nearly seven years, saying conditions in March were "severe."

 

EVENTS

** It is too soon to decide whether the Tour de France can go ahead, but if it does it may be without roadside spectators, France's sports minister said.

 

** Current contracts for players and coaches should be extended until the end of the delayed domestic soccer seasons, according to an internal FIFA document presented to its Coronavirus Working Group.

 

(Compiled by Milla Nissi, Sarah Morland, Aditya Soni and Ramakrishnan M.; Editing by Tomasz Janowski and Maju Samuel)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2020-03-27

Follow Thaivisa on LINE for breaking COVID-19 updates

[donnacha]

Far more up-to-date info here: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Over half a million now infected, and the U.S.A is winning with over 82K active cases compared to China's less than 4K. Even Italy has only 62K.

New York alone has 37K active cases, only a thousand less than Germany which is the 4th most infected country in the world. 

Most screwed countries in the world are San Marino with 6 active cases per thousand population, the Vatican with 5, Andorra and the Faeroe Islands with 3, while Iceland and Luxembourg have 2. Thailand miraculously has only 0.00006 thanks to wise leadership, insight, and trustworthiness of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha.

Remember: Stay at home, wash your hands, and don't touch yourself.

 

 

Edited March 27, 2020 by donnacha

[Laughing Gravy]

35 minutes ago, donnacha said:

Thailand miraculously has only 0.00006 thanks to wise leadership, insight, and trustworthiness of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha.

I had to check the calendar. No its not Wednesday yet.

[rabas]

46 minutes ago, donnacha said:

Over half a million now infected, and the U.S.A is winning with over 82K active cases compared to China's less than 4K. Even Italy has only 62K.

Do you think China disposed of the rest of their 81,285 reported cases?

[samran]

The US doing it so Bigly. The Donald determined for the US to be a world leader in this. 

[donnacha]

1 minute ago, rabas said:

Do you think China disposed of the rest of their 81,285 reported cases?

Obviously, anything reported by China should be treated with a grain of salt. I could have said "China's claimed 4K active cases", but that is pretty much implicit.

So, yeah, China claim 73K recovered and over 3K dead. We will probably never know the true numbers other than what we can extrapolate from the extremely high concentrations of chemicals associated with cremation detected in the skies over Wuhan over the past few months.

 

 

[donnacha]

2 minutes ago, samran said:

The US doing it so Bigly. The Donald determined for the US to be a world leader in this. 

Don't really understand the need to pretend that Trump deliberately caused a pandemic but, okay.

Some things should be bigger than partisan politics.

 

[donnacha]

36 minutes ago, samran said:

What we're looking at here is China deciding, around mid-February, "Screw it, now we know who dies and roughly in what numbers, and now that other countries have their own outbreaks and we won't be blamed for not containing it, let's start massaging the figures to create the narrative that we have successfully turned it around and, then, everyone goes back to work"

They know that they have a once-in-a-century opportunity to overtake the Western economies who, as democracies, cannot just tell their populations to suck it up and get back to work. The West will remain in unproductive lockdown limbo for at least the next few years, with nothing to offer the world apart from grossly inflated currencies, while China roars ahead.

Just like how the United States after WWII, when the rest of the world's manufacturing infrastructure lay in tatters, were able to become the workshop of the world, setting the country up for unprecedented employment figures and prosperity in the 50's and 60's. You can be 100% certain that China see the same opportunity for themselves now, and they will happily throw a few million pensioners into the bonfire for the greater glory of China

 

Edited March 27, 2020 by donnacha

[samran]

5 minutes ago, donnacha said:

Don't really understand the need to pretend that Trump deliberately caused a pandemic but, okay.

Some things should be bigger than partisan politics.

 

It should be, but he hasn’t. He treated it as a joke for too long early in the piece. The cost will be the inevitable bodies which sadly will start to pile up shortly. 
 

This is a massive failure in leadership. 

[donnacha]

13 minutes ago, samran said:

This is a massive failure in leadership.

Hyperbole.

You are pretending that any president has any actual power. On matters like this, he is effectively just a Salesman-in-Chief. Whatever spin he may have put on the initial reports, the massive governments departments in the background were planning the actual strategy. He does what the experts tell him to do.

Hillary would have done exactly the same stuff but presented it in a more conventional way. Biden too, probably just getting it mixed up with AIDS a bit.

I don't care a whit for Trump but am constantly amazed at how those who are obsessed with him, even since before he took office, have been so openly determined to impeach him. They have turned everything, even this natural disaster, into yet another reason to attack him.

My sense of it is that all these attacks, if anything, actually help firm up Trump's support and make the Democrats seem crazy to the swing voters you need to win over. I understand that it plays well with everyone you know, but they already hate him anyway. Your hate of Trump might actually get him re-elected, despite a cratered economy and tens of thousands of Americans dying over the next few months. Just like 2016, the 2020 is yours to lose.



 

Edited March 27, 2020 by donnacha

[stephenterry]

Can the mods moderate the number of new Covid topics on this site? It's continuously overwhelming and uncoordinated.  This latest is out of date already, and IMO, pointless to anyone watching Live TV news reports.

 

If someone reports my post, maybe we'll get a mod reaction...

Edited March 27, 2020 by stephenterry
addition

[Pesche]

I am sick and tired of all this BS !!!

 

We are experiencing a "severe flu" NOT a pandemic!

 

Get informed properly:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_pandemic

 

This mass Panic and hysteria caused from the MASS MEDIA is really getting out of hand - and the tragedy is that it is mostly based on INCORRECT information spread by the MASS MEDIA!

And now "they" inject billions and trillions for help?!

 

The economic consequences, recession etc. is literally provoked by the MASS MEDIA - NOT by the virus outbreak!!!

 

Wake up folks!

 

 

 

Edited March 27, 2020 by Pesche

[tifino]

Chinas' Figures should also include all the corona collateral:

 - all the Pilferers/Murderers/Scammers caught and Shot since this started... 

 

[Traubert]

3 hours ago, donnacha said:

Obviously, anything reported by China should be treated with a grain of salt. I could have said "China's claimed 4K active cases", but that is pretty much implicit.

So, yeah, China claim 73K recovered and over 3K dead. We will probably never know the true numbers other than what we can extrapolate from the extremely high concentrations of chemicals associated with cremation detected in the skies over Wuhan over the past few months.

 

 

Medical waste. 5 tonnes a day. 60% above capacity. Their furnaces are working around the clock.

 

How is New York coping?

[Traubert]

3 hours ago, donnacha said:

Don't really understand the need to pretend that Trump deliberately caused a pandemic but, okay.

Some things should be bigger than partisan politics.

 

But your very next post is just that....... ????

[donnacha]

1 hour ago, stephenterry said:

Can the mods moderate the number of new Covid topics on this site? It's continuously overwhelming and uncoordinated.  This latest is out of date already, and IMO, pointless to anyone watching Live TV news reports.

Stop reading them. Just read the threads you are interested in.

[donnacha]

25 minutes ago, Traubert said:

But your very next post is just that....... ????

In a thread about Covid-19 statistics, my very next post (Link: Post #8) was about how to interpret the flattening of the curve in China. Nothing to do with partisan politics, unless you are applying the concept of partisan politics to geopolitics. I suppose you could do that, but I think it was clear in post #7 that I was objecting to American partisan politics being dragged into everything.

If, in fact, you did not mean my "very next post", but post #10 which I wrote in response to Samran's post #9 that continued the discussion about Trump, well, I'm not sure what you think I should have done there ... ignore him? I wouldn't feel comfortable with that. I always try to be polite, even to raging communists.

In any case, if you're going to pick holes, at least try to be more exact and avoid highly specific phrases such as "your very next post" if what you actually mean is "a later post you wrote".

 

Edited March 27, 2020 by donnacha

[donnacha]

59 minutes ago, Pesche said:

I am sick and tired of all this BS !!!

 

We are experiencing a "severe flu" NOT a pandemic!

 

Get informed properly:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_pandemic

 

This mass Panic and hysteria caused from the MASS MEDIA is really getting out of hand - and the tragedy is that it is mostly based on INCORRECT information spread by the MASS MEDIA!

And now "they" inject billions and trillions for help?!

 

The economic consequences, recession etc. is literally provoked by the MASS MEDIA - NOT by the virus outbreak!!!

 

Wake up folks!

 

 

 

Your post is a valuable reminder that the number of people infected worldwide, only 535 thousand, is minuscule compared to the 450 million who bravely struggle with mental disorders. Thank you.

 

Edited March 27, 2020 by donnacha

[ncc1701d]

** Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Thursday exempted churches from coronavirus lockdowns by classifying religious activity as an essential service.

 

I’m going straight to hell, because this actually made me laugh.

[overherebc]

On 3/27/2020 at 7:31 PM, ncc1701d said:

 

 

 

I’m going straight to hell, because this actually made me laugh.

See you on the same bus.

Just sit two metres away.

Edited March 29, 2020 by overherebc