Europe faces ICU bed crunch, rushes to build field Hospitals
will bring a recession that probably has no parallel in the recent past," he said.
"The combination of the two facts and the risk that it contributes to enhanced instability, enhanced unrest, and enhanced conflict are things that make us believe that this is the most challenging crisis we have faced since the Second World War."
With most business activity grinding to a halt for an undetermined period of time, scenes of economic desperation and unrest were emerging across the globe.
In Italy, queues were lengthening at soup kitchens while some supermarkets were reportedly pillaged.
Half a million more people now need help to afford meals, Italy's biggest union for the agriculture sector Coldiretti said, adding to the 2.7 million already in need last year.
"Usually we serve 152,525 people. But now we've 70,000 more requests," confirmed
Roberto Tuorto, who runs a food aid association.
It was crucial to "ensure that the economic crisis unleashed by the virus doesn't become a security crisis," he warned.
The economic pain of lockdowns is especially acute in poorer nations.
In Tunisia several hundred protested a week-old lockdown that has disproportionately hit the poor.
"Never mind coronavirus, we're going to die anyway! Let us work!" shouted one protester in the demonstration on the outskirts of the capital Tunis.
Africa's biggest city Lagos was just into its second full day of lockdown on Wednesday -but with some of the world's biggest slums, home to millions who live hand-to-mouth, containment will be a challenge.
Wary of a collapse of the world's economy, the globe's leading central bankers have pumped billions of liquidity into the system.
Last week, G20 leaders in turn said they were injecting USD 5 trillion into the global economy to head off a feared deep recession. But with the spread of the virus far from abating, stock markets fell again in Asia and Europe on Wednesday.
In the European Union, the terms of a rescue plan threatened to divide the bloc.
Worst-hit Italy and Spain are
leading a push for a shared debt instrument -- dubbed "coronabonds", but talk of shared debt is a red line for Germany and other northern countries.
The tone sharpened this week, with some Italian politicians even taking out an advertisement in a major German newspaper to remind Europe's biggest economy of WWII debts to jolt it into action.
The economic cost of the crisis was still piling up as lockdowns remain at the forefront of official disease-stopping arsenals -- a strategy increasingly borne out by science.
ROME: Facing intense surges in the need for hospital ICU beds, European nations are on a building and hiring spree, throwing together makeshift hospitals and shipping Coronavirus patients out of overwhelmed cities via high-speed trains and military jets.
The key question is whether they will be able to find enough healthy medical staff to make it all work.
Even as the virus slowed its growth in overwhelmed Italy and in China, where it first emerged, hospitals in Spain and France reached their breaking points and the U.S. and Britain braced for incoming waves of desperately ill people.
"It feels like we are in a third world country. We don't have enough masks, enough protective equipment, and by the end of the week we might be in need of more medication too, said Paris emergency worker Christophe Prudhomme.
In a remarkable turnaround, rich economies where virus cases have exploded are welcoming help from the less wealthy. Russia sent medical equipment and masks to the US on Wednesday. Cuba sent doctors to France. Turkey sent a planeload of masks, hazmat suits, goggles and disinfectants to Italy and Spain.
London is just days from unveiling a 4,000-bed temporary hospital built in a massive convention center to take non-critical patients so British hospitals can free up space and keep ahead of expected virus demand.
Himachal Pradesh Jal Shakti Vibhag
CORRIGENDUM