WASHINGTON: Officials look at potential action as Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned that the outbreak in the U.S. is going to get worse.
CDC chief calls Europe ‘the new China’ amid crisis
GENEVA — The World Health Organization declared Wednesday that the global coronavirus crisis is now a pandemic as several American cities joined European counterparts in banning large gatherings.
By reversing course and using the charged word “pandemic” that it had previously shied away from, the U.N. health agency sought to shock lethargic countries into pulling out all the stops.
“We have called every day for countries to take urgent and aggressive action. We have rung the alarm bell loud and clear,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO chief.
“All countries can still change the course of this pandemic. If countries detect, test, treat, isolate, trace and mobilize their people in the response,” he said. “We are deeply concerned by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction.”
Iran and Italy are the new front lines of the fight against the virus that started in China, the WHO said.
“They’re suffering, but I guarantee you other countries will be in that situation soon,“said Dr. Mike Ryan, the WHO’s emergencies chief.
For the global economy, virus repercussions were profound Wednesday, with increasing concerns of wealth- and job-wrecking recessions.
WHO officials said they thought long and hard about labeling the crisis a pandemic — meaning a new virus causing sustained outbreaks in multiple regions of the world.
The risk of employing the term, Ryan said, is “if people use it as an excuse to give up.”
But the benefit is “potentially of galvanizing the world to fight.”
With officials saying that Europe has become the new epicenter, Italy’s cases soared again, to 12,462 infections and 827 deaths — numbers second only to China.
“If you want to be blunt, Europe is the new China,” said Robert Redfield, head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In response to the crisis, Italy announced all shops and businesses except pharmacies and grocery stores would be closed nationwide beginning Thursday and designated billions in financial relief to cushion economic shocks from the virus, its latest efforts to adjust to the fast-evolving crisis that silenced the usually bustling heart of the Catholic faith — St. Peter’s Square.
Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte said it was necessary to “go another step” in toughening the already unprecedented travel and social restrictions that took effect Tuesday by shuttering pubs, restaurants, hair salons, cafeterias and other businesses that can’t operate with at least 1 yard of space between workers and customers.
“In this moment, all the world is looking at us for the number of infections, but also see great resistance,“Conte said on Facebook Live.
These measures are on top of travel and social restrictions that imposed an eerie hush on cities and towns across the country.
In Iran, by far the hardest-hit country in the Middle East, the senior vice president and two other Cabinet ministers were reported to have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus. Iran reported another jump in deaths, by 62 to 354 — behind only China and Italy.
Still, the effectiveness of travel restrictions and quarantines will likely drop substantially as COVID-19 spreads globally, making it impossible for countries to keep the virus out. Health officials will also need to be more flexible in their coordinated response efforts, as the epicenters are likely to shift quickly and dramatically — as demonstrated by the recent eruptions in Iran and Italy.
Earlier, Conte emphasized fighting the outbreak must not come at the expense of civil liberties, suggesting that Italy is unlikely to adopt the draconian quarantine measures that helped China push down new infections from thousands per day to a trickle and allowed its manufacturers to restart production lines.
China’s new worry is that the coronavirus could reenter from abroad.
Beijing’s city government announced that all overseas visitors will be quarantined for 14 days.
Of 24 new cases reported
Wednesday, five arrived from Italy and one from the United States.
China has had more than 81,000 virus infections and over 3,000 deaths.
For most, the coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. But for a few, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illnesses, including pneumonia. More than 125,000 people have been infected worldwide and more than 4,600 have died.
Britain’s government announced a $39 billion economic stimulus package and the Bank of England slashed its key interest rate by half a percentage point to 0.25%.
Normal life was increasingly upended, with Pope Francis livestreaming prayers from the privacy of his Vatican library as police barred access to St. Peter’s Square, emptying it of tens of thousands of people who attend the weekly papal address. In Denmark, Prime Minister Minister Mette Frederiksen announced that all schools, preschools and universities will close as of Monday.
And in the U.S., officials in Seattle announced that public schools would close for about 53,000 students and large gatherings were banned in San Francisco and in Washington state, the hardest-hit U.S. state, with 25 deaths.