WHO warns 'long way to go' in virus crisis, deaths top 180,000
GENEVA, Switzerland — The World Health Organization on Wednesday warned that the coronavirus crisis would not end any time soon, with many countries only in the early stages of the fight, as the global death toll surpassed 180,000.
The pandemic has sparked not only a health emergency, but a global economic rout, with businesses struggling to survive, millions left jobless, and millions more facing starvation.
US President Donald Trump — with an eye on widespread unemployment and his re-election prospects — prepared to sign an executive order suspending the issuance of green cards for 60 days.
Health experts in the world's biggest economy warned it could face an even deadlier second coronavirus wave come winter, as some US states moved to reopen select businesses.
Nations around the world have been scrambling to fight the pandemic — which has killed more than 180,000 people and infected nearly 2.6 million worldwide — while desperately seeking ways to limit the devastating economic fallout.
As some countries have moved to lift lockdown restrictions that have upended daily life around the globe, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus issued a sober warning.
"Make no mistake: we have a long way to go. This virus will be with us for a long time," Tedros told a virtual press conference.
"Most countries are still in the early stages of their epidemics. And some that were affected early in the pandemic are now starting to see a resurgence in cases."
Worst-hit region Europe saw its death toll climb to another grim milestone of 110,000, while fatalities in Italy, the hardest hit country behind the United States, topped 25,000.
Finland said it would maintain a ban on gatherings of more than 500 people through July.
In Spain, which reported a slight increase for the second day running in the number of COVID-19 deaths, the government said it did not expect to lift its strict lockdown until mid-May.
"We must be incredibly careful in this phase," Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said.
'Significant step'
But Germany, which has cautiously begun allowing shops to reopen, offered another glimmer of hope when it announced that human trials for a vaccine will start by next week.
The trial, only the fifth to have been authorised worldwide, is a "significant step" in making a vaccine "available as soon as possible", the country's regulatory body said.
With several months to go before a viable vaccine can be rolled out, more than half of humanity remains under some form of lockdown.
Singapore extended its confinement order for a month to June 1, as the Asian city-state — which managed to keep its outbreak in check early on — has been hit by second-wave infections.
The director of the US Centers for Disease Control also warned Americans to prepare for a more ferocious second round of outbreaks.
"There's a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through," Robert Redfield told The Washington Post.
In South Africa, more than 73,000 extra troops were sent out to enforce a shutdown as authorities struggled to keep people indoors — particularly in overcrowded townships.
With businesses shuttered and millions of jobs lost, the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) said the virus crisis would hit the least privileged the hardest.
"I want to stress that we are not only facing a global health pandemic, but also a global humanitarian catastrophe," WFP executive director David Beasley told the UN Security Council on Tuesday.
"Millions of civilians living in conflict-scarred nations... face being pushed to the brink of starvation."
The WFP said the number of people suffering from acute hunger was projected to nearly double to 265 million this year.
Standing in line in Bangkok's historic quarter for food donations of rice, noodles, milk and curry packets, Chare Kunwong, a 46-year-old masseur, said: "If I wait for the government's aid, then I'll be dead first."
'Wrong and unjust'
In the United States, Trump cast his decision to suspend the issuance of green cards as one to "help put unemployed Americans first in line for jobs as America reopens."
"It would be wrong and unjust for Americans to be replaced with immigrant labor flown in from abroad," he said.
The US has recorded more than 46,000 deaths and more than 800,000 infections — and its health care infrastructure, especially in hotspots like New York, has struggled to cope.
Protesters took to the streets again Wednesday — this time in Virginia's state capital Richmond — to demand that stay-at-home orders be lifted so people can get back to work.
But that demonstration came as experts revealed that the country's first virus-related death came in February, weeks earlier than first reported.
'Now they die alone'
Among those hardest hit economically during the crisis are millions of migrant workers who toil abroad to send money back home to their families.
Remittances are expected to plunge by about 20 percent globally this year, the biggest decline in recent history, the World Bank said in a report on the money transfers that are lifelines to millions of families.
The pandemic shutdowns mean even the bodies of some migrant workers cannot be sent home, and are instead being buried or cremated in the country where they die -- often without any loved ones present.
"Nobody comes anymore, nobody touches, nobody says goodbye," said Ishwar Kumar, manager of a Hindu cremation ground in Dubai.
Before the pandemic, people would come "to grieve and bring flowers. Now they die alone".
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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