Europe’s health systems under strain; Spain deaths pass 4,000
Watching patients die alone is killing all of us inside, says nurse; UK orders 10,000 ventilators; Swiss virus cases top 10,000, with 161 deaths; Germany ramps up virus tests to 500,000 a week
The number of coronavirus infections were set to top a half-million worldwide on Thursday as both Italy and the United States appeared poised to surpass China, where the pandemic began, and Spain’s death toll climbed to more than 4,000.
Health care systems in Europe and New York buckled under the strain.
Faced with the spread of the pandemic, the At least 2.8 billion people are under severe travel restrictions. But the head of the World Health Organisation ( WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, scolded world leaders for wasting precious time in the fight against the virus that has already killed more than 22,000 people and infected over 480,000, thrown millions out of work and ravaged the world economy.
“The time to act was actually more than a month ago or two months ago,” he said on Wednesday. ”We squandered the first window of opportunity. ... This is a second opportunity, which we should not squander and do everything to suppress and control this virus.”
Spain has become the country in Europe where the outbreak is spreading the fastest.
On Thursday, the Health Ministry reported 8,578 new infections and 655 deaths, bringing the total cases to 56,188 and more than 4,000 fatalities — second only to Italy’s death toll of 7,503.
“We are collapsing,” said Lidia Perera, a nurse at Madrid’s Hospital de la Paz. “We need more workers.”
Watching patients die alone is “killing all of us inside,” she said.
“Physically this is extremely complicated, but psychologically it is appalling,” said colleague Patricia Núñez, a nurse who is recovering from being infected herself.
In Italy, doctors and nurses have been begging the government daily to provide more masks, gloves and goggles and urged the public to understand how important onerous social distancing measures really are. Scientists say stopping just one person from getting the virus means scores of others will not become infected down the road.
As the number of deaths in Europe soared past 12,000, Spain prolonged a state of emergency that will allow it to impose broader lockdowns while French President Emmanuel Macron launched “Operation Resilience,” a military-backed response to combat the pandemic.
Britain ordered 10,000 ventilators to grapple with the COVID-19 crisis, working with engineers from Dyson. The government wants to increase its supply of the breathing machines from 8,000 to 30,000.
As cases start to rise in Russia, President Vladimir Putin ordered the military in to help. The government announced it would halt all international flights starting on Friday and will have troops build 16 medical centers to treat virus victims by mid-may.
Switzerland has 10,714 confirmed coronavirus infections and 161 people have died of the disease, the Federal Office of Public Health said on Thursday.
Turkey can resort to the “highest measure” of adopting a complete curfew if coronavirus infections continue to spread, the government said on Thursday as it clamped down further on medical tools leaving the country.
A cruise ship stricken by a coronavirus outbreak was told on Thursday to leave Australian waters, days after local infection numbers spiked when passengers on another vessel were allowed to disembark and roam freely around Sydney.
Germany has boosted its coronavirus test rate to 500,000 a week, a virologist said on Thursday, adding that early detection has been key in keeping the country’s death rate relatively low.
Greek authorities have quarantined a cluster of Muslim majority towns and villages in the country’s northeast after several cases and a death from the new coronavirus in the area.
Pope Francis was reported on Thursday to have tested negative for the novel coronavirus after a person in his residence was said to have contacted COVID-19.
Romania’s Health Minister Victor Costache resigned on Thursday following criticism of the government over its handling of the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Costache did not give a reason for his resignation while Prime Minister Ludovic Orban said it was for “personal and professional reasons.”