Huge US toll predicted
With refrigerated morgue trucks parked on New York City’s streets to collect the surging number of dead, US public health officials are predicting that the coronavirus could ultimately kill more than 100,000 people across the nation.
The number of US deaths could range from 100,000 to 240,000 even if Americans continued to stay home and limit contact with others, experts predicted at a media briefing yesterday with President Donald Trump.
‘‘I want every American to be prepared for the hard days that lie ahead,’’ said Trump, who extended social distancing guidelines until April 30. ‘‘We’re going to go through a very tough two weeks.’’
Elsewhere, hard-hit Italy reported that its infection rate appeared to be levelling off and new cases could start declining, but that the crisis was far from over. China edged closer to normal as stores in the epicentre city of Wuhan began reopening.
Worldwide, more than 860,000 people have been infected and over 42,000 have died, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University. Italy and Spain account for half the deaths, while the US has over 185,000 infections and more than 3900 dead. That’s above the official toll of about 3300 in China.
New York was the nation’s deadliest hot spot yesterday, with about 1550 deaths statewide, more than 1000 of them in New York City, which is bracing for things to get much worse in the coming weeks.
At Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, critically ill Covid-19 patients were filling intensive care units, surgical floors and operating rooms and waiting in the emergency room for beds to become available, said Dr Eric Wei of NYC Health + Hospitals, the city’s hospital agency.
‘‘I’ve practised emergency medicine for a long time, and I’m seeing things that I never could have imagined in terms of the things this virus can do to all ages, including people who were previously healthy,’’ he said.
A 1000-bed emergency hospital set up at the mammoth Javits Convention Centre began taking non-coronavirus patients to help relieve the city’s overwhelmed health system. A US Navy hospital ship with 1000 beds was expected to accept patients soon. The indoor tennis centre that is the site of the US Open tournament is being turned into a hospital as well.
Around the city, workers in protective gear have been seen putting the bodies of victims into refrigerated trailers. At some hospitals, like Lenox Hill in Manhattan, the trucks are parked on the streets, along sidewalks and in front of apartments.
Two ships carrying passengers and crew from an ill-fated South American cruise are urging Florida officials to let them dock. Dozens aboard have reported flu-like symptoms, and four people have died.
Governor Ron DeSantis says Florida’s health care resources are already stretched too thin. Trump said he would speak with DeSantis and ‘‘do what’s right’’.
Dr Silvio Brusaferro, head of Italy’s institutes of health, said that three weeks into a nationwide lockdown, the hardest-hit country in Europe was seeing the rate of new infections level off.
‘‘The curve suggests we are at the plateau,’’ he said. ‘‘Now we should start to see the decline if we continue to place maximum attention on what we do every day’’.
With the country’s health care system buckling under the pressure,
a field hospital, built in just 10 days, was unveiled at the Milan fairgrounds. The head of the project, former civil protection chief Guido Bertolaso, caught the virus while on the job and had to work from his hospital bed.
In Russia, lawmakers approved harsher punishments, including prison sentences of several years, for violating quarantine rules and spreading misinformation. The chief doctor at Moscow’s top hospital for coronavirus patients said he had tested positive, a week after shaking hands with President Vladimir Putin.
Spain reported more than 840 new deaths, pushing the toll above 8000 and forcing the capital, Madrid, to open a second temporary morgue after an ice rink pressed into service last week became overwhelmed.
Dozens of hotels across Spain have been turned into recovery rooms, and authorities are building field hospitals in sports centres, libraries and exhibition halls.
In Britain, where the number of dead reached nearly 1800, the medical director of the National Health Service’s operations in England said there was evidence that social distancing was working.
A 13-year-old boy from south London with no apparent underlying health conditions who died on Monday is believed to be the UK’s youngest Covid-19 victim.
China reported just one new death and 48 new cases, all of them from overseas.
Meanwhile, media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders says Turkmenistan has banned its media from using the word ‘‘coronavirus’’. The word has also been removed from health information brochures distributed in schools, hospitals and workplaces. The autocratic, gasrich Central Asian nation has so far reported no cases.
Burundi, the African nation that once declared it was coronavirus-free because it had ‘‘put God first’’, confirmed its first two cases as Human Rights Watch released a report citing witness accounts of squalid quarantine conditions, and police telling people that they could be shot if they left quarantine. Forty-nine of Africa’s 54 countries now have the virus. –AP
‘‘I’m seeing things that I never could have imagined.’’ Dr Eric Wei,
NYC Health + Hospitals