US, WASHINGTON (ORDO NEWS) — The world is desperately trying to escape the tragedy experienced by Italy against the coronavirus by strengthening the barriers against the pandemic on Monday and speeding up research for treatments or vaccines.
Pressure is mounting on Japan for a postponement of the Summer Olympic Games scheduled for this summer. On Monday, the president of the International Athletics Federation said maintaining them is “neither feasible nor desirable”.
If the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has opened the door, for the first time, to a postponement, the course of the Olympic flame, supposed to start Thursday in Fukushima, place of the nuclear disaster of March 11, 2011, is not modified ” for now, “the organizers said on Monday.
One by one, the States seem to realize the obvious: this unprecedented health crisis will be long, especially since a vaccine, according to the big pharmaceutical groups, will not be available before 12 to 18 months.
The epidemic is soaring in Spain, which crossed the 2,000 mark on Monday (+462 in 24 hours). The number of deaths has multiplied by more than two in three days in the second most affected country in Europe by Covid-19, after Italy.
And there is currently no vaccine or approved treatment against the virus, which has killed more than 15,000 people to date and has infected more than 324,000 worldwide, according to an AFP count which only officially lists the cases declared.
But initiatives to find a cure are accelerating. A European clinical trial, dubbed Discovery, was launched on Sunday in at least seven countries of the Old Continent to test four experimental treatments against the coronavirus.
While President Donald Trump places great hope in chloroquine, a potentially effective antimalarial, China, which he accused of having delayed informing the world about the dangers of the “Chinese virus”, Monday its first clinical trial to test a vaccine. Just like Russia, which has announced that it has started testing a vaccine on animals.
– Coercive measures –
To prevent a second wave of contamination due to “imported” cases (39 Monday), passengers on international flights to Beijing must now make a stopover in a Chinese city to undergo medical examinations.
Even more radical, Hong Kong will ban all non-residents arriving by plane from abroad from entering its territory from Wednesday.
Day after day, the world is barricading itself a little more and more than a billion people across the planet are now under house arrest.
Some countries have taken coercive measures, such as France, Italy, Spain, Argentina or California (United States), while others, such as Iran or the United Kingdom, are content , for the time being, of recommendations supported.
In the United Kingdom, where Prime Minister Boris Johnson has warned of an acceleration of contamination, a bill concerning extraordinary powers to fight against the coronavirus is due to be examined on Monday. Ditto in France where the government is preparing to extend the confinement of the population beyond the initial date of late March.
Italy continues to pay the heaviest price, by far, with 5,476 dead in total, including 651 dead in 24 hours according to the latest assessment available on Sunday.
– failure in the United States Senate –
On Monday, Greece (15 dead) joined the cohort of countries that imposed containment. Its capital Athens looked like a ghost town. New Zealand did the same, but Saudi Arabia chose to impose a night curfew for three weeks.
Its Emirati neighbor, for the moment, is content to close the “malls”, these luxurious shopping centers usually very busy.
In the United States, despite a rise in the number of cases – 416 dead and more than 33,000 contaminations -, the sacred union did not prevail in the Senate, where Democrats and Republicans failed to agree on a recovery plan on Sunday aiming to mobilize up to nearly 2,000 billion dollars in support of the economy.
As a result, stock markets and oil prices fell on Monday at the opening. In Europe, red dominated, erasing the little thinning at the end of last week. Paris, Frankfurt and London lost more than 4%.
The text of the Republicans “offers a vast plan of rescue to the companies, without protecting the employees”, justified the leader of the democratic minority in the Senate, Chuck Schumer.
In fact, the closure of non-vital businesses and the cessation of tourism have thrown millions of people out of work worldwide.
– “Unimaginable” –
In Australia, where the specter of the Great Depression of the 1930s is now raised, huge queues of unemployed people formed on Monday in front of employment agencies on the first day of the closure of many businesses.
“Something unimaginable just a few weeks ago,” said Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
In Rio de Janeiro, the cry of the heart of Vania Ribeiro, community leader in a favela, illustrates the haunting of a health disaster for the poorest: “We are told that we must wash our hands constantly, but how to do it when running water is regularly cut? “.
The situation of illegal immigrants in the United States, many of whom have already lost their jobs, is hardly more enviable. In Asia, tens of thousands of migrant workers were trying to flee Thailand on Monday, where cases of coronavirus are increasing to return to Laos or Burma, at the risk of spreading the pandemic a little more.
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The article is written and prepared by our foreign editors from different countries around the world – material edited and published by Ordo News staff in our US newsroom press.