Nearly 39 million in US seek unemployment help
The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits in the two months since the coronavirus took hold in the US has swelled to nearly 39 million, the government reported yesterday, even as states from coast to coast gradually reopen their economies and let people go back to work.
More than 2.4 million people filed for unemployment last week in the latest wave of layoffs from the business shutdowns that have brought the economy to its knees, the Labour Department said.
That brings the running total to a staggering 38.6 million, a job-market collapse unprecedented in its speed.
The number of weekly applications has slowed for seven straight weeks. Yet the figures remain breathtakingly high – 10 times higher than normal before the crisis struck.
It shows that even though all states have begun reopening over the past three weeks, employment has yet to snap back and the outbreak is still damaging businesses and destroying jobs.
‘‘While the steady decline in claims is good news, the labour market is still in terrible shape,’’ said Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said over the weekend that US unemployment could peak in May or June at 20 per cent to 25 per cent, a level last seen during the depths of the Great Depression almost 90 years ago. Unemployment in April stood at 14.7 per cent, a figure also unmatched since the 1930s.
Over 5 million people worldwide have been confirmed infected by the virus, and more than 330,000 deaths have been recorded, including over 94,000 in the US and around 165,000 in Europe, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University and based on government data. Experts believe the true toll is significantly higher.
The World Health Organisation said yesterday that a daily record of 106,000 new cases were reported in the previous
24 hours with two-thirds coming from just four countries – America, Russia, Brazil and India.
The figure is the highest in a single day since the outbreak started in Wuhan, China, in December.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director-general, said: ‘‘We still have a long way to go in this pandemic. We are concerned about rising cases in low and middle-income countries.’’
The pandemic has officially claimed more than 330,000 lives – with more than half recorded in Europe – although the true number is higher, as many countries do not include deaths outside hospitals and there is still limited testing in the community. There is particular concern about Latin America, which has in the past week overtaken the US and Europe to report more new daily cases, accounting for around a third of the
91,000 reported. Europe and the US each accounted for just over 20 per cent.
The shift to Latin America, India and Russia represents a new phase in the spread that initially peaked in China in February before outbreaks in the West.
A large number of new cases are from Brazil, which recently overtook Germany, France and the UK to claim the third-largest outbreak, behind the US and Russia. Cases in Brazil, where President Jair Bolsonaro once described
Covid-19 as ‘‘a little flu’’, are rising at a pace second only to the US, with the country’s health officials reporting 1179 deaths in a single day.
But the situation is also worsening in Peru, now the second Latin American country after Brazil to hit 100,000 coronavirus cases. The number of deaths in Peru has passed 3000, with only Brazil and Mexico suffering more.
Cases and deaths in Peru have trebled since April 30, despite Peru’s nine-week lockdown. Doctors say the health system is on the brink of collapse, with drastic equipment shortages in public hospitals.
Miguel Armas, a nurse at a hospital in the capital, Lima, told the AFP news agency: ‘‘It’s like a horror film. Inside it’s like a cemetery, given all the bodies. Patients are dying in their chairs.’’
Mexico is also struggling. The country’s death toll hit a record 424 for a single day on Wednesday. In total Mexico has recorded 56,594 cases and 6090 deaths, though there are fears more cases may not have been reported.
In Africa, on just one day this month, 50 Tanzanian truck drivers tested positive for the coronavirus after crossing into neighbouring Kenya. Back home, their president insists that Tanzania has defeated the disease through prayer.
All the while, President John Magufuli has led a crackdown on anyone who dares raise concerns about the virus’s spread in his East African country or the government’s response to it. Critics have been arrested, and opposition politicians and rights activists say their phones are being tapped.
The country’s number of confirmed virus cases hasn’t changed for three weeks, and the international community is openly worrying that Tanzania’s government is hiding the true scale of the pandemic. Just over 500 cases have been reported in a country of nearly 60 million people.
Meanwhile, cities across Germany are preparing for protests against the coronavirus lockdown that are expected to bring thousands of people on to the streets this weekend.
Germany has lifted many of its lockdown measures but that has done nothing to slow a rapidly growing protest movement that brought 5000 people on to the streets in Stuttgart last week and 3000 in Munich.
But senior politicians have warned that the demonstrations are at risk of being hijacked by extremists.
‘‘You have to be careful that the campaigns for more freedom are not hijacked by those who try to make political capital out of it – from the far Left or, above all, the far Right,’’ Markus Soder, the regional prime minister of Bavaria said. ‘‘With such protesters, one should not only maintain social distancing physically but also mentally.’’
His comments were echoed by Heiko Maas, the German foreign minister, who said: ‘‘If radical extremists and antiSemites exploit demonstrations, then everyone should keep a distance of more than 1.5 metres.’’
The protests have so far brought together a disparate mix of conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers and others who believed the risk from the virus has been exaggerated.
South Korea has reported 20 new cases of the coronavirus, including nine in the Seoul metropolitan area, as authorities scramble to stem transmissions as they proceed with a phased reopening of schools. The figures announced by the Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention yesterday brought national totals to 11,142 cases and 264 deaths. Nine other fresh cases were linked to international arrivals.
Australia announced it has extended its ban on cruise ship visits until September 17. – AP, Telegraph Group