News Desk :
The coronavirus has infected 803,547 people in 201 countries and territories around the world and killed 39,046 while recovered 172,438.
Besides, Italy marked a minute of silence and flew flags at half mast on Tuesday (March 31) to mourn the 11,591 people who have died from the coronavirus pandemic that has drastically altered life in the Mediterranean country.
The nation of 60 million people has recorded nearly a third of all fatalities caused by the disease around the world.
The day of mourning marks a month in which Italy saw more deaths from a single disaster than at any time since World War II.
It was first detected in Italy near the northern city of Milan in late February.
The virus “is an injury that hurt the whole country,” Rome mayor Virginia Raggi said after observing a minute’s silence at noon. “Together, we will get through this,” she said at a ceremony held outside Rome’s city hall.
Vatican City also flew its yellow-and-white flags at half mast in solidarity with the rest of Italy.
The Italian government imposed an unprecedented lockdown three weeks ago to help stem the spread of a virus that has now officially infected 101,739 people in the country.
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The financial cost of the forced shutdown of almost all businesses threatens to send Italy’s economy – the European Union’s third largest last year – into its deepest recession in decades.
The government decided to extend the shutdown on Monday until at least mid-April.
Stores and restaurants are not expected to start opening until at least May and no official is willing to predict when life might return to the way it was just a month ago.
“The sacrifice we make when we are asked to stay at home is necessary to save all of us,” the Rome mayor said.
“We must do it for all those who lost their lives and all those who put their lives at risk by working for us all – the doctors the nurses, the people who work in supermarkets.”
But the head of the infectious diseases department at Milan’s Luigi Sacco Hospital that managed to isolate the Italian strain said he was looking at the future with some hope. “We have the impression that (the pandemic) is weakening,” Massimo Galli told Italian radio.
Italy reported 812 deaths on Monday. Its single day record was 969 on Friday – the highest daily toll recorded anywhere in the world.
Meanwhile, Spain’s government was preparing new measures on Tuesday to help households and exempt small firms from social security payments after business leaders bristled at a tightening of the coronavirus lockdown in Europe’s second worst-hit country.
The death toll hit 8,189 after 849 fatalities were reported overnight, while confirmed cases of the virus rose by about 11% to 94,417. In percentage terms, however, the pace of increases in both contagion and deaths has slowed somewhat in the past few days, health officials said.
Health emergency chief Fernando Simon, who tested positive for the virus on Monday, said in a video news conference Spain was unlikely to need further restrictive measures, besides those already announced, while that data was being analyzed.
Spain has already surpassed China, where the disease originated in late 2019, in the number of deaths and infections and has the world’s second-highest death toll after Italy.
A government source told Reuters that as part of a 700 million-euro aid package likely to be approved during Tuesday’s cabinet meeting, the government wants to suspend evictions of vulnerable households for the six months after the state of emergency is lifted.
This would cover the unemployed, workers who have been temporarily laid off or had their hours cut, and self-employed people on low earnings. Previous aid packages, such as a moratorium on mortgage payments, had stricter criteria to qualify.
Investment funds and other large landlords would have to accept a 50% loss on debt incurred by their tenants, or restructure that debt within two to three years. Rental contracts expiring in the next six months would automatically be renewed for a further six months.
The government is also studying a six-month holiday on social security payments for small businesses and the self-employed.
Health officials on Monday said Spain’s lockdown measures – among the strictest in Europe – have begun to take effect, with the daily infection increase slowing.
However, business leaders criticized the recent tightening of the restrictions, which prevent non-essential workers from leaving their homes, and complained that a lack of consultation with the private sector left companies unprepared.
“Spain is a country where 95% of companies are tiny, with just one or two workers. They can’t stay stuck at home, they need to get out and work,” deputy chief of business group CEOE Inigo Fernandez de Mesa told Reuters. Data released on Tuesday showed a slight fall in Spain’s overall indebtedness in the third quarter, while employment increased by 2%.
But those improvements are set to be short-lived, as Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez expects the fallout from coronavirus to tip the economy into recession in 2020.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez proposed raising the European Union’s budget to better handle the economic fallout from the pandemic.
Besides, with more than 3,000 killed by the coronavirus in the U.S., according to numbers released Tuesday, the U.S. death toll is approaching China’s where the pandemic broke out.
On Monday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo warned the situation in his state is a sign of things to come if other parts of the country don’t act fast.
“There’s nothing unique about New Yorkers’ immune system. There is no American who is immune from this virus,” he told Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC’s The Last Word.
The number of people confirmed to be infected with the virus in the U.S. reached 163,838 as of 2:30 am ET, according to NBC News’ tracker – the highest number for a single country in the world. More than a third of cases are in New York State. Also on Monday, President Donald Trump said at a press conference that support was being rolled out across the country, including the construction of a 2,900-bed hospital in New York and thousands of more beds and equipment being distributed by the U.S. Navy and Army Corps of Engineers.
“It’s been really pretty amazing what they’ve done,” he said.
“I think we’re going to be in very good shape,” he added about preparations for the country to manage the growing rate of infections.
Trump also approved disaster declarations for the states of Rhode Island and Pennsylvania on Monday.
The World Health Organization has also warned the pandemic is “far from over” in Asia.
“This going to be a long-term battle and we cannot let down our guard,” said Dr. Takeshi Kasai, WHO regional director for the western pacific region, during a press conference in Manila, the Philippines, on Monday.
“We need every country to keep responding according to their local situation,” he said.
Meanwhile, Iran reported 141 additional fatalities due to the novel coronavirus on Tuesday, pushing the death toll in the country to 2,898, a health official said Tuesday.
Iran’s state TV reported Kianoush Jahanpour, a spokesman for the Health Ministry, as saying that 3,111 more people have tested positive for COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, bringing the total infections to 44,606.
He said 14,656 patients infected with the virus have so far recovered and been discharged from hospitals.
According to the spokesman, 3,703 patients are in critical condition.
The number of people who have undergone health screening as part of a national campaign against the virus launched on March 5 now tops 65 million, out of a total population of some 81 million, he stressed.
After first appearing in Wuhan, China, last December, the novel coronavirus has spread to at least 178 countries and regions, according to data compiled by U.S.-based Johns Hopkins University.
The data shows more than 788,000 cases have been reported worldwide so far, with the death toll nearing 38,000 and nearly 167,000 recoveries.
