The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Nations try to slow virus, help economies
BERLIN — Mass disruptions shuddered across the globe Tuesday as governments struggled to slow the spread of the coronavirus while also trying to keep their economies afloat. The chaos stretched from Lithuania, where border traffic jams were 40 miles deep, to Detroit, where bus service came to a sudden stop when drivers didn’t show up for work.
European Union leaders, meanwhile, agreed to shut down the bloc’s external borders for 30 days. In the United States, West Virginia became the last state to report a case of the disease, confirming that it has spread nationwide.
Increasingly worried about the economic fallout of the global shutdown, the U.S., Britain and the Netherlands also announced rescue packages totaling hundreds of billions of dollars, while Venezuela — long a fierce critic of the International Monetary Fund — asked the institution for a $5 billion loan.
But it was everyday people who suffered most.
Miguel Aguirre, his wife and two children were the only people on a normally bustling street near San Francisco’s City Hall, one day after officials in six San Francisco Bay Area counties issued a “shelter-inplace” order that requires most residents to stay inside and venture out only for food, medicine or exercise for three weeks — the most sweeping lockdown in the U.S. against the outbreak. On Tuesday morning, only two coffee shops on the street were open. Both were empty.
Aguirre said he and his wife, both janitors at a Boys and Girls Club, had heard about the order on TV, but decided to show up to work anyway because they need the money. His supervisor texted him that he should leave.
“If we don’t work, we don’t eat,” said Aguirre, who brought his two daughters with him because schools were shuttered. He had already lost his second job, at a hotel, when tourism conferences began canceling a month ago.
“There been days when I want to cry, but I have to keep going,” Aguirre said.
In Brussels, meanwhile, Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, 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 had agreed in a conference call to the Commission’s proposal for an entry ban to the bloc — along with Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Britain — with “very, very limited exceptions.“Germany will implement the decision immediately.
But the countries also agreed on the need to ensure continued cross-border travel for commuters, she said.
There will be “grave, very grave consequences“for European economies from the outbreak, she said, one reason to safeguard the flow of goods.
On Monday, the EU issued guidelines aimed at facilitating the flow of critical goods like food and medicine, while helping individual nations restrict non-essential travel.
But on Tuesday it was chaos on many borders with traffic backed up for dozens of miles.
In Italy, reported infections jumped to 27,980. With 2,503 deaths, Italy now accounts for a third of the global death toll.
Spain, now the fourth-most infected country, saw the number of people with the virus rise by more than 2,000 in one day to 11,178 and virus-related deaths jump by almost 200 to 491. Only China, Italy and Iran had more infections.
With the number of cases worldwide topping 190,000, a surge of patients in Madrid’s hospitals has fueled worries in Europe and elsewhere of what lies ahead.