Paris: The coronavirus pandemic marked a terrible milestone on Monday, as the world surpassed 20 million cases of the small deadly infection that has rocked life almost everywhere.
The number at 22.15 GMT 20,002,577 cases, with 733,842 deaths recorded, according to an AFP count from official sources.
At some other staggering milestone, the death toll is expected to exceed 750,000 in a matter of days as the global fitness crisis that began a backward last year in China progresses.
While other things that were once unthinkable have a harsh truth: having to wear a mask in tourist spots in Paris, or book a spot on Copacabana beach in Rio through an app and then a social distance in the sand, the World Health Organization (WHO) has suggested to others not to do so. Despair.
“Behind those statistics, there is much pain and suffering. Array… But to be clear: there are green outbreaks of hope,” said WHO leader Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“It’s never too past because of the opposite of the epidemic,” he said.
He gave examples of countries that had taken strong action against COVID-19, such as Rwanda and New Zealand, which on Monday announced their goal of opening a virus-free “travel bubble” with the Cook Islands.
While much of the world is stuck in a cycle of discouraging epidemics and economically crushing blockages, all eyes are on the vaccine race.
A WHO survey indicates that candidate vaccines are being developed worldwide, six of which are in phase 3 of clinical evaluation.
But WHO Emergency Director Michael Ryan warned that a vaccine “is the only component of the response,” calling for polio and measles vaccines that have not been absolutely eradicated.
“You will need to be able to supply this vaccine to a population that needs it and request it,” he said.
Infections have risen alarmingly in Western Europe, which has also been suffocating through a heat wave, with temperatures exceeding 35 degrees Celsius (95 F).
The scorching heat caused crowds to flock to the beaches over the weekend despite fitness warnings about the threat of infection.
In the Paris region, other people over the age of 11 are now required to wear a mask in crowded spaces and tourist spots.
These come with the banks of the Seine and more than a hundred streets of the French capital.
Marion, 24, from central Paris, said masks are “restrictive” but mandatory “if we need a moment.”
“A whole moment of blocking,” he added.
Several French cities have already taken action, as well as parts of Belgium, the Netherlands, Romania and Spain.
In Berlin, thousands of young people returned to school on Monday after the summer holidays, dressed in sports masks, which are mandatory in non-unusual spaces such as schoolyards.
Greece, for its part, announced a night curfew for restaurants and bars in some of its main tourist destinations after the accumulation of new cases.
In Italy, the coronavirus peaks of its neighbors have sounded the alarm.
“France, Spain and BalkansArray … Italy is surrounded by contagion,” italian health minister Roberto Speranza said.
It’s another story in Pakistan, which allowed all restaurants and parks to reopen on Monday, after the country saw a drop in new cases for several weeks.
By Monday night, the United States, the world’s most affected country, had recorded 163,370 deaths and 5,085,821 cases of infection, according to Johns Hopkins University tracker.
With a more than a million-dollar workload on Sunday, President Donald Trump’s Democratic opponent in the presidential election, Joe Biden, tweeted that the number “stuned the brain and broke the heart.”
The figure came when Trump accused Trump of breaking the letter by unilaterally extending an aid program against the virus.
The package, announced through Trump Saturday after talks between Republican lawmakers and Democrats crashed into a wall, was “absurdly unconstitutional,” senior Democrat Nancy Pelosi told CNN.
But while the world’s largest economy is still suffering to get out of a massive hole, Democrats are nervous about any legal challenge to an aid program they consider seriously inadequate.
After the United States, Brazil has the maximum number of cases, and over the weekend is the country where 100,000 people are killed.
President Jair Bolsonaro minimized the risk of coronavirus and, following Brazil’s most recent milestone, the country’s most-watched television channel, Globo, asked, “Has the President of the Republic done his duty?”
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