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Oliver Lamb presents the most recent COVID-19 statistics, as the pandemic potentially shows signs of slowing in certain corners of the globe. This article describes various governments' approaches to tackling the virus, exploring a number of unprecedented measures taken.
Perhaps the most shocking event of this week was not so much the lockdown itself – these days they are ten-a-penny – but the speed and suddenness with which it was imposed. Ten days previously, the British government had been talking nonchalantly of herd immunity, as a happy bonus of letting coronavirus run riot in the population. Now, it is closing non-essential shops, and confining people to their homes.
The dramatic U-turn reflected the efforts of governments worldwide to keep pace with a pandemic that is spiralling beyond control. At the beginning of Saturday 21 March, global confirmed cases stood at 275,000 with 11,000 deaths. A week later those numbers had soared to 596,000 and 27,000. The United States, with 104,000 confirmed cases, and Italy, with 86,000, have now overtaken China (81,000) as the worst-affected countries. Spain (nearly 66,000), Germany, (nearly 51,000), France and Iran (both over 32,000) are close behind.* The true case count is bound to be many times higher.
Britain is the fourth major Western European country, after Italy, Spain and France, to go into lockdown. In the last week, more than half of Americans have also been ordered, by their state governments, to stay home.
The pandemic in the United States is now the fastest-spreading in the world, its case count rising by well over 10,000 every day. Spain’s and Germany’s numbers, too, are surging. On the other hand, there is tentative hope that Italy’s quarantine is at last turning the tide on the coronavirus; the infection rate there is slowing, and the country has not matched the 6500 new cases added on Saturday. However, there are now concerns that, even if the worst is over in the badly-hit north, for the less affluent south, it is yet to come.
For Italy, the Chinese outcome would be a good one. Provinces outside Hubei, where the virus originated, have not suffered catastrophes of anywhere near the same scale. In Hubei itself, the pandemic seems to have been suppressed; the few new infections reported are all imported rather than domestically transmitted. Chinese officials are keen to credit the strict quarantine they imposed on 23 January, but, given the quarantine’s dire economic effects, they are equally keen to lift it. Hubei’s public transport is resuming service, and healthy people are returning to work. Yet, behind officials’ façades of confidence, lie fears and uncertainties. What if imported cases spark a second wave of the virus? What if the virus is down, but not out, and returns with a vengeance when the lockdown ends? Indeed, many Chinese citizens privately suspect that official figures are concealing the true scale of the pandemic.
At least the rest of the world is learning from the mistakes of China and the West. Many countries in South America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Australasia had already shut schools, banned gatherings and taken other social distancing measures. More draconian restrictions, such as nationwide quarantines and curfews are now in place in countries, ranging from Bolivia, South Africa, and Jordan, to Thailand and New Zealand. Most extraordinarily of all, the factions in Yemen’s civil war have welcomed a UN ceasefire in order to prepare for the pandemic. Yet many of these countries have case counts only in the hundreds or even lower. They hope that, by acting now, they can escape the catastrophes unfolding in Europe and America.
The biggest lockdown of all came into force on Tuesday in India, as the government closed state borders, suspended public transport and told its 1.3 billion citizens to stay home. Already chaos is brewing. Supply trucks are stuck at state borders, leading to shortages and inflation. The poor and the homeless are flocking to makeshift gruel kitchens. In the absence of public transport, unemployed migrant workers have to return on foot to their villages, sometimes hundreds of miles away.
In poorer countries, such lockdowns may be even more disastrous. The developed world is facing a steep economic slump, but at least they have the economic firepower to deal with it. Many others, particularly in Africa, are already heavily indebted and, now, with simultaneous recessions in the US, China and the Eurozone, are seeing demand for their exports collapse. The World Bank has announced $14 billion in financial support for such countries, and, on Wednesday, the United Nations appealed for $2 billion for developing and war-torn nations. But this is a pittance.
The lack of support gives many in poorer countries a choice between staying home and earning no money, or going to work and risking infection. Many will choose the latter. Combined with crowded slums and poor sanitation, this is a recipe for disaster. In the last seven days alone, the number of African cases has quadrupled to 3450. What’s more, developing countries do not have the resources to deal with a major epidemic; the average low-income sub-Saharan country has 50 critical care beds. However, this is not just an African problem, because, as China is discovering, countries which the virus has already hit may be affected again, through cases imported from elsewhere.
Even if it is in Western countries’ interests to send economic support to poorer nations, for now, they are focusing on themselves. On Friday, President Trump signed into law an economic stimulus package worth $2 trillion, the largest such bill in American history. It includes direct payments of $1200 to millions of individuals, as well as an $850 billion fund for businesses. A day previously, it emerged that over the last seven days nearly 3.3 million Americans had applied for unemployment benefit – four times higher than the previous weekly record. This gives us only a glimpse of the damage that closures and lockdowns may wreak on Western economies. Despite this, global stock markets had a positive, if volatile, week.
As various events continue to be cancelled worldwide, it has been decided that the 2020 Olympics Games will not go ahead. 10,000 athletes had been set to participate, while six times as many spectators had been predicted to attend. The U.S. Track and Field governing body wrote an open letter to the organisers, encouraging the cancellation of the Games, while Norway and Brazil’s national Olympic committees supported the same notion.
*statistics per country taken from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/