1.5mn Covid cases, 90,000 deaths

CHILLING MILESTONES America yet again grieves nearly 2,000 daily deaths; disease footprint continues to expand

WASHINGTON: The coronavirus pandemic notched up another round of record death tolls in the US and Europe, dousing the optimism of American President Donald Trump who insisted there was light at the end of the tunnel.

The virus has now killed more than 90,000 people and infected over 1.5 million, sparing almost no country and tipping the world into a devastating crisis as global commerce shudders to a halt.

For the second straight day, the US grieved nearly 2,000 deaths on Wednesday, as flags flew at half-mast in hardest-hit New York.

There was also a record death toll of 938 over 24 hours in Britain, where PM Boris Johnson is in intensive care. France saw its number of dead climb over 10,000 as the country prepared to extend its lockdown measures. Spain and Italy are still seeing hundreds of deaths per day despite signs the disease has peaked.

And the pandemic is marching into areas previously only lightly affected: in Africa, Ethiopia declared a state of emergency and Liberia said it was locking down its capital Monrovia.

Its deadly tentacles also crept deep into the Amazon rainforest, with the first case detected among the Yanomami, an indigenous people isolated from the world until the mid-20th century and vulnerable to disease.

Nevertheless, some glimmers of hope shone in the darkness, with New York governor Andrew Cuomo saying the epidemic curve seemed to be flattening.

All around the world, medical facilities are at bursting point as they struggle with a relentless procession of ill patients.

In the badly affected city of Guayaquil in Ecuador, sick patients are passing out before arriving at emergency care and the elderly are slumped outside in wheelchairs at overwhelmed hospitals.

At the global level, the World Health Organization (WHO) and Trump are embroiled in an ugly war of words, with Trump accusing the UN body of “blowing it” and being too close to China.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged unity at a time of global crisis, saying, “If you don’t want many more body bags, then you refrain from politicising it.”

Governments are wrestling with the problem of when to exit lockdown procedures and reboot a global economy that is effectively in deep freeze.

The World Trade Organization warned the pandemic was likely to spark the deepest recession “of our lifetimes,” with global trade poised to plummet by one third.

The Bank of France estimated the country’s economy shrank 6% in the first quarter - the worst since the end of World War II.

Recent US data indicate 10 million people have lost their jobs in the world’s top economy that is closed for business.