ROME: Europe including Italy, Spain, France and Britain reporting their highest daily tolls of more than 1680 deaths to date, as field hospitals shot up across New York, the epicenter of the US outbreak bracing for dark times ahead.
Deaths shot up again across the Europe, while there are hopeful signs that the spread of infections is slowing in hardest-hit Italy and Spain, more than 800 died overnight in both countries. France recorded a one-day record of 499 dead while Britain reported 381 coronavirus deaths.
With more than 40,000 killed by the disease barreling around the globe, the United States, already home to the largest number of confirmed infections, hit a bleak milestone as its national death toll surpassed China’s.
In a matter of months, the virus has infected nearly 850,000 people in a crisis hammering the global economy and transforming the daily existence of some 3.6 billion people who have been told to stay home under lockdown.
With hospitals direly overstretched, lockdowns have been extended despite their crushing economic impact.
In Belgium a 12-year-old girl died in another worrying case of a youth succumbing to the disease.
Meanwhile the United States saw its death toll top 4,00, roaring past China’s official tally of 3,309, according to a Johns Hopkins University tracker.
France joined it with a surge to 3,525 deaths, an official toll that includes only those who died in hospital and not those who perished at home or in seniors’ homes.
The inundation of patients has sent health facilities around the world into overdrive.
Field hospitals are popping up in event spaces while distressed medical staff make grim decisions about how to distribute limited protective gear, beds and life-saving respirators.
In scenes previously unimaginable in peacetime, around a dozen white tents were erected to serve as a field hospital in New York’s Central Park.
While many companies and schools around the globe have shifted to teleworking and teaching over video platforms, huge swaths of the world’s workforce cannot perform their jobs online and are now lacking pay and face a deeply uncertain future.
Read more: COVID-19 pandemic death toll reaches to 25 country-wide and infections crosses to 2,049
