Italy virus deaths hit record as Trump goes on war footing
ROME, Italy — Italy on Wednesday reported nearly 500 new deaths from the novel coronavirus, the highest one-day official toll of any nation, as Donald Trump ordered sweeping new action against the pandemic and declared himself a war president.
With the number of global coronavirus infections shooting past 200,000, governments announced new containment measures and the US Congress approved a $100 billion emergency relief package.
But markets took another beating as they braced for grim weeks ahead.
As Trump announced the deployment of military hospital ships, German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued a dramatic appeal to citizens.
"Not since the Second World War has our country faced a challenge that depends so much on our collective solidarity," Merkel said in a television address.
Dire news came out of Italy which reported 475 new deaths. More than 8,000 people have died around the world with fatalities in Europe now topping those in Asia, where the outbreak began in December in China.
Italy has now recorded more than one-third of global deaths and has shut down all businesses and public gatherings — steps that have spread across the world as worries mount.
"They main thing is, do not give up," Italian National Institute of Health chief Silvio Brusaferro told reporters.
"It will take a few days before we see the benefits" of containment measures, said Brusaferro.
"We must maintain these measures to see their effect, and above all to protect the most vulnerable."
Britain, where Prime Minister Boris Johnson had initially chosen a different path, followed the lead of his European counterparts and said that schools would shut nationwide from Friday.
The death toll in Britain has topped 100 and lawmakers were warned to steer clear of the prime minister's weekly question time, amid warnings that parliament was a particularly infectious area.
'Wartime president'
Preparing for a spike in ill Americans, Trump invoked a Korean War-era law that allows the government to compel businesses to sign contracts -- which can be used to expand production of necessities such as protective masks.
"I view (myself) as a, in a sense, a wartime president. I mean, that's what we're fighting. I mean, it's a very tough situation here," he told reporters at the White House.
"It will be a complete victory," he vowed.
Governor Andrew Cuomo said that Trump told him the 1,000-room USNS Comfort would sail to New York's harbour, providing a floating hospital for the metropolis.
The US Senate easily completed passage of a $100 billion package that would provide for free testing, sick pay and paid family leave -- a day after Britain unveiled a £330 billion ($400 billion, 363 billion euros) package of loans for virus-hit businesses.
But financial markets were unimpressed, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunging another 6.3 percent after similar routs on European and Asian markets.
Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced they were closing the world's longest international border to all but essential travellers for 30 days, although trade will continue unfettered.
The International Labour Organization warned the pandemic could leave up to 25 million more people out of work and drastically slash workers' incomes.
Africa must 'wake up'
The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned that COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus, constituted an "unprecedented threat."
In a virtual news conference, he stressed the need for countries everywhere to "come together as one against a common enemy: an enemy against humanity."
He sounded a special alarm for Africa, saying the continent must "wake up" and "prepare for worst."
In the first known fatality in sub-Saharan Africa, officials in Burkina Faso reported the death of a high-ranking politician -- Rose-Marie Compaore, the first-vice president of the parliament, who was 62 and diabetic.
Nearly 600 cases have been reported in sub-Saharan Africa, raising particular alarm due to the continent's fragile healthcare systems.
Latin America has more than 1,300 recorded infections and the continent's most populous country Brazil announced its first fatality on Tuesday.
Brazil's National Security Minister Augusto Heleno revealed Wednesday that he had tested positive, making him the latest high-ranking official with COVID-19.
The WHO has also called for "aggressive" action in Southeast Asia to combat the virus after it was largely spared alarming case numbers clocked elsewhere in Asia.
Malaysia has already banned travellers from overseas, while Vietnam has blocked visitors from several European nations.
Australia's government urged citizens to not travel abroad and banned gatherings of more than 100 people as cases topped 500.
Slow to understand danger
A day after the European Union imposed a 30-day ban on travellers from outside the bloc, EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen acknowledged politicians had initially underestimated the threat.
"We understand that measures that seemed drastic two or three weeks ago, need to be taken now," she told Germany's Bild newspaper.
Within the bloc some countries have sealed borders, while bars, restaurants and most shops have closed their doors until further notice, grinding life in Europe's normally bustling cities to a halt.
Asian hotspots China and South Korea have seen new infections and deaths level out in recent weeks -- China reported just one new domestic case for the second consecutive day.
In a sign of the shifting hotspot, China said it would send two million masks and 50,000 coronavirus testing kits to the EU to help countries battle the outbreak.
Every sector from tourism to food to aviation is affected as the global economy effectively goes into shutdown.
The outbreak has also shredded the global sporting and cultural calendar.
In football, the European and Copa America championships have been postponed until next year, and the French Open tennis tournament has been delayed to the autumn.
The Tokyo Olympics still hang in the balance.
The International Olympic Committee acknowledged there was no "ideal" solution, after some top athletes said they were being forced to take health risks should the summer extravaganza go ahead.
Both the Eurovision Song Contest and the annual Glastonbury music festival in England have been axed.
Follow this page for updates on a mysterious pneumonia outbreak that has struck dozens of people in China.
New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says on Sunday that he had contracted COVID-19, testing positive at a key point in his flailing campaign for re-election.
Hipkins saYS on his official social media feed that he would need to isolate for up to five days -- less than two weeks before his country's general election.
The leader of the centre-left Labour Party said he started to experience cold symptoms on Saturday and had cancelled most of his weekend engagements. — AFP
The World Health Organization and US health authorities say Friday they are closely monitoring a new variant of COVID-19, although the potential impact of BA.2.86 is currently unknown.
The WHO classified the new variant as one under surveillance "due to the large number (more than 30) of spike gene mutations it carries", it wrote in a bulletin about the pandemic late Thursday.
So far, the variant has only been detected in Israel, Denmark and the United States. — AFP
The World Health Organization says on Friday that the number of new COVID-19 cases reported worldwide rose by 80% in the last month, days after designating a new "variant of interest".
The WHO declared in May that Covid is no longer a global health emergency, but has warned that the virus will continue to circulate and mutate, causing occasional spikes in infections, hospitalisations and deaths.
In its weekly update, the UN agency said that nations reported nearly 1.5 million new cases from July 10 to August 6, an 80% increase compared to the previous 28 days. — AFP
The head of US intelligence says that there was no evidence that the COVID-19 virus was created in the Chinese government's Wuhan research lab.
In a declassified report, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) says they had no information backing recent claims that three scientists at the lab were some of the very first infected with COVID-19 and may have created the virus themselves.
Drawing on intelligence collected by various member agencies of the US intelligence community (IC), the ODNI report says some scientists at the Wuhan lab had done genetic engineering of coronaviruses similar to COVID-19. — AFP
Boris Johnson deliberately misled MPs over Covid lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street when he was prime minister, a UK parliament committee ruled on Thursday.
The cross-party Privileges Committee said Johnson, 58, would have been suspended as an MP for 90 days for "repeated contempts (of parliament) and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process".
But he avoided any formal sanction by his peers in the House of Commons by resigning as an MP last week.
In his resignation statement last Friday, Johnson pre-empted publication of the committee's conclusions, claiming a political stitch-up, even though the body has a majority from his own party.
He was unrepentant again on Thursday, accusing the committee of being "anti-democratic... to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination".
Calling it "beneath contempt", he said it was "for the people of this to decide who sits in parliament, not Harriet Harman", the veteran opposition Labour MP who chaired the seven-person committee. — AFP
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