30-mile queue at blocked borders
Gigantic tailbacks build up in race to get out or to deliver essential supplies
DESPERATE TRAVELLERS in cars and trucks are choking European borders, creating huge traffic jams as they try to get home before borders shut or to deliver critical supplies to help nations cope with the quickly spreading coronavirus.
The picture emerged as Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, said the number of confirmed cases worldwide had passed 200,000.
Its Centre for Systems Science and Engineering said there were 201,436 cases, with 8,006 deaths and 82,032 patients listed as recovered.
Hungary opened its borders in phases on Tuesday night, seeking to alleviate some of the pressure from eastern Europeans trying to return home.
Bulgarian citizens were first allowed to cross the immigrantphobic country in carefully controlled convoys, then Romanians had a turn.
But by early yesterday on the Austrian side of the border trucks were backed up for 17 miles and cars for nearly nine miles as rules allowing only Hungarians or transport trucks through the border were reintroduced.
The traffic jam on the Czech-Polish border – at the northern Nachod-Kudowa-Slone crossing – was more than 30 miles long yesterday, up from 25 on Tuesday.
EU leaders have been working on how to make sure food, medical supplies and other essential goods keep flowing but so far borders have been clogged.
They are also trying to work out ways to allow seasonal agricultural workers, needed to keep the production of food going, to travel back and forth across essentially closed borders.
The UN’s International Labour Organisation estimates that fallout from the outbreak could cause nearly 25m job losses and drain up to $3.4 trillion of income by the end of this year.
The Geneva-based agency said an internationally co-ordinated policy response could help mitigate losses through worker protection, fiscal stimulus and support for jobs and wages
Unesco said about half the world’s student population was now out of school because of the pandemic.
The latest school closures cover 102 countries with smaller, localised shutdowns in others for a total of 850m students, from preschools to universities. A week ago, school shutdowns covered just 15 countries, the United Nations agency said.
Nations around the world are facing the same issues and President Donald Trump announced the US and Canada had agreed to close their border to non-essential traffic but promised that trade would not be affected.
In South-East Asia, the causeway between Malaysia and the financial hub of Singapore was eerily quiet after Malaysia shut its borders, while the Philippines backed down on an order giving foreigners 72 hours to leave from a large part of its main island.
President Trump’s administration is considering a plan to immediately return to Mexico all people who cross America’s southern border illegally, according to two sources.
The coronavirus is now present in every US state after West Virginia reported an infection.
Increasingly worried about the economic fallout of the global shutdown, the US and Holland announced rescue packages totalling hundreds of billions of pounds, while longtime International Monetary Fund critic Venezuela asked the institution for a $4.2bn loan.
Major Asian stock markets fell back yesterday following early gains after Wall Street jumped on Mr Trump’s promise of aid.
In Brussels, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said there had been “a unanimous and united approach” to the decision to prohibit most foreigners from entering the EU for 30 days.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said European leaders agreed in a conference call to the commission’s proposal for an entry ban to the bloc – along with Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and the UK – with “very, very limited exceptions”.
The cost of the outbreak could be 25m job losses and 3.4 trillion dollars.
The UN’s International Labour Organisation.