World’s hospitals in crisis
Medical supplies run short in New York, Spain and Italy as deaths mount
New York rushed to bring in an army of medical volunteers yesterday as the statewide death toll from the coronavirus doubled in 72 hours to more than 1900 and the wail of ambulances in the eerily quiet streets of the city became the heartbreaking soundtrack of the crisis.
As hot spots flared around the US in places like New Orleans and Southern California, the nation’s biggest city was the hardest hit of them all, with bodies loaded onto refrigerated morgue trucks by gurney and forklift outside overwhelmed hospitals, in full view of passing motorists. And the worst is yet to come. “How does it end? And people want answers,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said. “I want answers. The answer is nobody knows for sure.”
US President Donald Trump acknowledged that the federal stockpile is nearly depleted of personal protective equipment and warned of trying times to come.
“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.”
Trump said his administration has agreed to ship out 1000 breathing machines vital for treating severe cases of Covid-19. He said the US government has kept close hold on its stockpile of nearly 10,000 ventilators so they can be deployed quickly to states in need.
Meanwhile, European nations
facing extraordinary demand for intensive-care beds are putting up makeshift hospitals, unsure whether they will find enough healthy medical staff to run them. London is days away from unveiling a 4000-bed temporary hospital built in a huge convention centre.
In a remarkable turnabout, rich economies where virus cases have exploded are welcoming help from less wealthy ones. Russia sent medical equipment and masks to the United States. Cuba supplied doctors to France. Turkey dispatched protective gear and disinfectant to Italy and Spain.
Worldwide, more than 1 million people have been infected and close to 50,000 have died, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University, though the real figures are believed to be much higher because of testing shortages, differences in counting the dead and large numbers of unreported mild cases.
The US recorded about 210,000 infections and about 4800 deaths, with New York City accounting for about a quarter of the toll.
Even as the virus appears to have slowed its growth in overwhelmed Italy and in China, where it first emerged, hospitals on the Continent are buckling under the load.
“We don’t have enough masks, enough protective equipment, and by the end of the week we might be in need of more medication too,” said Paris emergency worker Christophe Prudhomme.
Spain reported a record 864 deaths in one day, for a total of more than 9000, while France registered an unprecedented 509 and more than 4000 in all. In Italy, with more than 13,000 dead, the most of any country, morgues overflowed with bodies, caskets piled up in churches and doctors were forced to decide which desperately ill patients would get breathing machines.
India’s highest court ordered news media and social media sites to carry the government’s “official version” of developments, echoing actions taken in other countries to curb independent reporting.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte threatened to order law enforcement to shoot troublemakers and stop massive food and cash aid if there are riots and people defy a lockdown imposed on millions.
The strain facing some of the world’s best healthcare systems has been aggravated by hospital budget cuts over the past decade in Italy, Spain, France and Britain.
The staffing shortage has been worsened by the high numbers of infected personnel. In Italy alone, nearly 10,000 medical workers have contracted the virus and more than 60 doctors have died.