The number of coronavirus infections yesterday closed in on a half-million worldwide and 22,000 deaths with both Italy and the United States on track to surpass China, and a record-shattering 3.3 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits in a single week in a stark demonstration of the damage to the world’s biggest economy.
Health care systems in Europe and New York buckled under the strain, with Spain’s death toll climbing to more than 4,000. In the U.S., an unprecedented $2.2 trillion economic rescue package to help businesses, hospitals and ordinary Americans make it through the crisis cleared the Senate and is expected to be voted on in the House on Friday. The plan would dispense checks of $1,200 per adult and $500 per child.
At least 2.8 billion people, or more than one-third of the Earth’s population, are under severe travel restrictions.
But the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, scolded world leaders for wasting precious time in the fight against the virus that has already killed more than 22,000 people and infected over 480,000, thrown millions out of work and ravaged the world economy.
“The time to act was actually more than a month ago or two months ago,” he said Wednesday. ”We squandered the first window of opportunity. …
This is a second opportunity, which we should not squander and do everything to suppress and control this virus.” In India, where the country’s 1.3 billion people are under orders to stay at home, untold numbers of them are now out of work, and many families have been left struggling to eat.
“Our first concern is food, not the virus,” said Suresh Kumar, 60, a bicycle rickshaw rider in New Delhi. He said he has a family of six who rely on his daily earnings of just 300 rupees, or about $4. “I don’t know how I will manage.”