News Desk :
Total fatalities from Covid-19 globally soared 2,76,884 with total cases 40,38, 785 in 210 countries and territories while recovered 14,02,716, according to worldometer. The United States is home to the world’s largest and deadliest coronavirus outbreak, with 78,622 fatalities and 13,22,223 infected according to Johns Hopkins University. The economic damage from the lockdowns to contain the virus has been swift and stunning, despite nearly $3 trillion in financial aid approved by Congress, and there is growing fear that the temporary layoffs will become permanent since some companies won’t survive. Taken together, 21.4 million jobs were destroyed in March and April, nearly equal to the 23 million positions created during the economy’s long expansion from February 2010 to February 2020. All major industry sectors felt the pain. Leisure and hospitality was the first sector hit and the one bearing the brunt of the impact of the lockdowns, shedding 7.7 million jobs, while manufacturing eliminated 1.3 million positions. Those two sectors alone added up to more than the 8.6 million total jobs lost in the two years of the global financial crisis. As bad as the data was, the real picture likely is much worse. The Labor Department noted the unemployment rate would have been closer to 20 percent, but some workers were misclassified as employed when they actually had been laid off because of COVID-19. The pandemic has caused many employees to leave the workforce altogether, while others have been forced from full-time jobs into part-time work. The measure of the labor force as a share of the total population sunk to 51.3 percent, its lowest in history, meaning nearly half of working-age Americans are not employed. Minorities were hit particularly hard: African American unemployment spiked to 16.7 percent from 6.7 percent in March, while the rate for Hispanics was 18.9 percent, more than triple last month. Italy on Friday became the third country in the world to record 30,000 deaths from the coronavirus, reporting 243 new fatalities compared with a daily tally of 274 the day before. Italy’s total death toll from COVID-19 since its outbreak came to light on Feb. 21 now stands at 30,201, the Civil Protection Agency said. Only the United States and Britain have seen more deaths from the virus. The daily number of new infections fell slightly to 1,327 from 1,401 on Thursday, taking the total of confirmed cases since the epidemic began to 217,185, the third highest global tally behind those of the United States and Spain. People registered as currently carrying the illness in Italy fell to 87,961 from 89,624 the day before. There were 1,168 people in intensive care on Friday against 1,311 on Thursday, maintaining a long-running decline. Of those originally infected, 99,023 were declared recovered against 96,276 a day earlier. The agency said 1.609 million people had been tested for the virus against 1.564 million the day before, out of a population of around 60 million. Spain’s daily death toll from the coronavirus fell to 179 on Saturday, down from 229 on the previous day, the health ministry reported. Overall deaths rose to 26,478 from 26,299 on Friday and the number of diagnosed cases rose to 223,578 from 222,857 the day before, the ministry said.
