This archive report was first published on 21 May 2020.
As the world grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic, a grim milestone has been reached: over 5 million confirmed cases worldwide, with the death toll surpassing 328,000. The virus has spread rapidly in Latin America, while Europe and the US are slowly reopening.
According to AFP data collected from official sources, known cases of COVID-19 have doubled in just one month. Brazil has logged the third-highest number of cases in the world, after the US and Russia. Peru, Mexico, and Chile have also seen steady increases in infections, with nurses in Lima warning that the health system is on the brink of collapse.
“It’s like a horror film,” said Miguel Armas, a nurse at the Hipolito Unanue hospital in the capital Lima. “Inside it seems like a cemetery given all the bodies. Patients are dying in their chairs (or) in their wheelchairs.”
Meanwhile, in the US, President Donald Trump insists the country is “Transitioning back to Greatness” as states reopen at different speeds. However, the losses are still punishing, with over 1,500 additional fatalities reported in 24 hours on Wednesday, bringing the total number in the US to over 93,400.
On the economic front, the latest figures out of the US showed the rate of unemployment slowing — but the total number of jobs lost since mid-March stood at an eye-watering 38.6 million. The US has also pumped an additional $1 billion into the British pharmaceuticals group AstraZeneca to help fund the production of a vaccine.
As governments pray for an end to the economic strangulation of shutdowns, the race to develop a vaccine has been buoyed by experiments on monkeys that offered hope that humans can develop immunity to the virus. In the meantime, governments are testing ways to live with the dangers despite fears of a second wave of infections.
Already a common sight in Spain, masks were officially made mandatory Thursday for anyone over the age of six in public places where social distancing is not possible. However, the director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Andrea Ammon, warned it was not a question of if there will be a second surge of infections but “when and how big”.
