Spain death toll passes 10,000; global virus cases near 1 million
Virus claims thousands more lives in its relentless march across the globe, including nearly 1,000 new deaths in Spain, despite more than half of the planet subjected to some form of lockdown
Confirmed coronavirus cases approached one million around the world on Thursday as Europe reeled from the pandemic and the US prepared for what President Donald Trump warned would be “horrific” days ahead.
The virus claimed thousands more lives in its relentless march across the globe, including nearly 1,000 new deaths in Spain, despite more than half of the planet subjected to some form of lockdown.
And it continued to wreak havoc on the global economy, with Spain reporting its biggest monthly increase in jobless claims on record and the US expected to reveal more massive job losses.
Since emerging in China in December, COVID-19 has infected more than 940,000 people — including at least 500,000 in Europe — and claimed more than 47,000 lives, according to a tally from official sources.
World Health Organisation (WHO) head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said there had been a “near exponential growth” in new cases over the past five weeks and a doubling of deaths in the past week alone.
“In the next few days we will reach one million confirmed cases and 50,000 deaths,” he told a virtual news conference on Wednesday, warning that Africa and Latin America needed to be prepared for a wider impact.
Britain and France both reported their highest daily death tolls on Wednesday, but infection rates in Italy and Spain — the two countries hardest hit — were slowing.
Spain said on Thursday it had suffered a record 950 deaths in 24 hours, bringing the total number of fatalities to 10,003.
The number of confirmed cases passed the 110,000 mark, the government said, although the rates of both new infections and deaths continued a downward trend.
“The data show the curve has stabilised” and the epidemic has entered a “slowdown” phase, Health Minister Salvador Illa said.
Spain, the eurozone’s fourth-largest economy, also registered a leap of 302,265 jobless claims last month after imposing a nationwide lockdown since March 14.
The virus has chiefly affected the elderly and those with pre-existing medical conditions, but recent cases have highlighted that it can kill people from all walks of life.
The dead have included a 16-year-old in France, a 12-year-old in Belgium and Ismail Mohamed Abdullah, 13, in Britain, whose family said the “gentle and kind” boy had no underlying health issues.
Thousands of people in Austria have downloaded an app to help track their contacts touted as a way to fight the spread of the new coronavirus, the Austrian Red Cross said on Thursday.
The “Stopp Corona” app has so far had more than 130,000 downloads, a Red Cross spokesman said, in a country of 8.8 million.
The number of deaths attributed to the global coronavirus epidemic in Belgium increased sharply and passed the 1,000 mark on Thursday, health officials said.
The official toll in the country of 11.4 million has doubled in the space of three days, in part because figures have been updated with a backlog of fatalities from retirement homes.
Five hundred and seventy people have died in nursing homes in France’s eastern region during the coronavirus outbreak, raising the prospect of a much larger death toll linked to the illness across the country.
France became the fourth country to pass the 4,000 coronavirus deaths threshold on Wednesday, but that does not include deaths outside hospitals.
The number of deaths caused by an infection with the new coronavirus in the Netherlands has increased by 166 to 1,339, health authorities said on Thursday.
The number of confirmed coronavirus infections in the country increased by 8% to 14,697, the Dutch Institute for Public Health said.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany has risen to 73,522 while 872 people have died of the disease, statistics from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Thursday.
Cases rose by 6,156 compared with the previous day while the death toll climbed by 140, the tally showed.