Virus reaches new countries as crisis seems to ease in China
THE CORONAVIRUS appeared for the first time in New York, Moscow, and Berlin, and clusters of the disease surged around the world, even as new cases in China dropped to their lowest level in six weeks on Monday and hundreds of patients were released from hospitals at the epicentre of the outbreak.
Almost nine times more cases were reported outside China than inside it over the past 24 hours, according to the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
‘GLIMMER OF HOPE’
But the organisation’s chief of emergencies pointed out that even regions that have taken less aggressive measures than the extraordinary lockdowns implemented by China have managed to keep the virus in check.
Dr Mike Ryan said that because COVID-19 is not as easily transmitted as the flu, “it offers us a glimmer … that this virus can be suppressed and contained”.
Amid the good-news, badnews developments, the global death toll pushed past 3,000, and the number of people infected topped 89,000, with fastexpanding outbreaks in South Korea, Italy, and Iran.
Around the world, the virus reshaped people’s routines, both at home and at work, from the millions of Japanese schoolchildren facing four weeks without class to special voting booths for Israelis under quarantine. Mobile hospitals were planned in Iran, and the Mona Lisa hung in a vacant room of the shuttered Louvre in Paris.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warned that the world economy could contract this quarter for the first time since the international financial crisis more than a decade ago.
“Global economic prospects remain subdued and very uncertain,” the agency said.