Race to buy gears, masks as virus-related deaths soar

THE worldwide race to protect people against unwitting coronavirus carriers intensified yesterday, pitting governments against each other as they buy protective gear and prompting new questions about who should wear masks, get temperature checks or even be permitted to go outside.

In northern Italy, the country with the most virus deaths in the world at over 13,000, guards with thermometer guns decide who can enter supermarkets. In Los Angeles, the mayor has recommended that the city’s 4 million people wear masks. Same goes for grocery store customers in Austria.

And a top health official in France’s hard-hit eastern region said American officials swooped in at a Chinese airport to spirit away a planeload of masks that France had ordered.

“On the tarmac, the Americans arrive, take out cash and pay three or four times more for our orders, so we really have to fight,” Dr Jean Rottner, an emergency room doctor in Mulhouse, told RTL radio.

A study by researchers in Singapore on Wednesday estimated that around 10 percent of new infections may be sparked by people who carry the virus but have not yet suffered symptoms.

In response, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed how it defined the risks of infection, saying essentially that anyone may be a carrier, whether they have symptoms or not. But neither it nor the World Health Organization changed their recommendations that everyone did not have to wear masks.

Nine leading European university hospitals warned yesterday they will run out of essential medicines for COVID-19 patients in intensive care in less than two weeks. The European University Hospital Alliance said countries should cooperate, not compete, to ensure a steady supply of these drugs for critically ill virus patients.

Spain reported a record number of daily virus-related deaths, 950 in 24 hours, bringing its total deaths to 10,003 even as its infection rate appeared to be slowing.

In the United States, from New York to Los Angeles, officials warned that the worst is still ahead. “How does it end? And people want answers,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said. “I want answers. The answer is nobody knows for sure.”

New York state’s coronavirus death toll doubled in 72 hours to more than 1,900. Bodies were being loaded onto refrigerated morgue trucks by forklifts outside overwhelmed hospitals.

Cuomo has already complained that US states are competing against each other for protective gear and breathing machines, or being outbid by the federal government.

President Donald Trump acknowledged that the federal stockpile is nearly depleted of the personal protective equipment needed by doctors and nurses.

“We’re going to have a couple of weeks, starting pretty much now, but especially a few days from now, that are going to be horrific,” he said.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said even a “tucked-in bandanna” could slow the spread of the virus and remind people to keep their distance from each other.

“I know it will look surreal,” he said, donning a mask. “We’re going to have to get used to seeing each other like this.”

In Japan, where masks are a household stable, the government planned to mail two gauze masks each to the country’s 50 million households.

In Greece, authorities placed an entire refugee camp of 2,400 people under quarantine yesterday after discovering that a third of the 63 contacts of just one infected woman tested positive — and none had showed symptoms.

As of 1am today, more than 980,000 people around the world have contracted the virus, according to Johns Hopkins University. More than 50,000 have died from the virus and another 204,000 have recovered. The real figures are believed to be much higher because of testing shortages, differences in counting the dead and mild cases that have gone unreported.

In Italy, a new study found a hidden toll from coronavirus in the province of Bergamo, more than doubling the official number of 2,060 dead to a new estimate of 4,500.

(AP)