The mayor of the United States’ thirdbiggest city Chicago issued a new stay-at-home advisory on Thursday, as thecountry’s Covid-19 outbreak shattered records in the absence of a nationalstrategy by President Donald Trump, reports AFP.
Lori Lightfoot called on the Midwestern city’s 2.7 million people to go outonly for essential tasks or to attend work or school, to scrap Thanksgiving plans and to avoid travel.
“Every single one of us needs to step up and ‘Protect Chicago’ right now,or 2020 could go from bad to worse,” said an explanatory note on the city’swebsite.
It comes as the United States, already the world’s hardest hit country,experiences its third and worst-by-far spike in coronavirus cases.
The seven-day-average of new daily cases currently stands above 125,000,more than 65,000 people are hospitalized, and more than 1,000 people are dying every day, according to data from the Covid Tracking Project.
Four states, including former global epicenter New York, have in recentdays ordered restaurants and bars to close at 10:00 pm.
And in embattled North Dakota, the governor has authorized Covid-19positive medics who don’t have symptoms to keep working in virus wards.
President Trump, who has focused his energies recently on trying tooverturn the election victory of his rival Joe Biden through legal challenges, rarely talks about the pandemic anymore, but has always opposedsweeping lockdowns.
Trump has instead focused on medical innovations as a means to end thecrisis — and the world received a dose of much-needed hope this week when USdrug giant Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech said their vaccine was 90 percenteffective.
Top US government scientist Anthony Fauci welcomed the news Thursday,saying that the “cavalry” was on its way, but warned people not to let mask wearing, distancing and other measures slip.
Speaking to a London think-tank by video-link, the world-leading expert oninfectious diseases added another vaccine is “literally on the threshold of being announced,” widely interpreted to mean one developed by US biotech firmModerna.
But the vaccines won’t arrive in time to prevent tens of thousands moredeaths.
An AFP tally of official sources found Thursday that the daily number ofglobal deaths had gone over the symbolic level of 10,000 in the past 24 hoursfor the first time since the start of the pandemic, standing at 10,010.
Global markets slid on fears of the virus surge that threatens economicrecovery, eroding earlier gains led by vaccine hopes.
France reported Thursday that the number of people in hospital for Covid-19was now higher than during previous peaks in April.
Elsewhere in Europe, Slovenia’s government announced that public transportwas being suspended and a ban on nearly all public meetings and gatheringsfor the next fortnight.
And Portugal’s prime minister said that a nighttime curfew that was alreadyin place in parts of the country would now cover some 70 percent of the population as the number of Covid patients being treated in hospital was morethan double the peak seen in the spring. Serbia’s Health Minister Zlatibor Loncar meanwhile cautioned that therewere no more hospital beds available for virus patients in the capital Belgrade.
But for all the dire warnings, there was growing evidence that people wereignoring restrictions imposed by governments and minimizing the risk of infection. In France, a survey revealed that more than half of the population hadbroken regulations governing a current partial lockdown.
“The second wave is extremely strong,” Prime Minister Jean Castex warned ina virtual news conference. “One in four deaths is now due to Covid.” In India, crowds packed New Delhi markets ahead of the Diwali festival oflights, the country’s biggest holiday, saying they were fed up with being cooped up.
India has the world’s second-highest caseload behind the United States, andthere are fears that a Diwali surge could hit major cities across the country of 1.3 billion. “People just don’t care,” said Tanisha, a 19-year-old student. “People wantto come out.” Compounding the weariness, a report by the non-profit First Draft thatfights misinformation delivered worrying news on Thursday, saying conspiracytheories about Covid-19 vaccines played an “outsized role” on social mediaand could threaten their efficacy.
