US, Europe medical workers struggle to save coronavirus patients
- 03 Apr 2020
The coronavirus outbreak snapped the United States’ record-breaking hiring streak of nearly 10 years, while US and European medical workers struggling to save ailing patients Friday watched supplies of medicine, protective equipment and breathing machines dwindle by the hour.
Worldwide, confirmed infections surged past 1 million and deaths topped 54,000, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
Jobs numbers released in the US showed the virus dealt a swift end to the nation’s 50-year-low unemployment rate, with employers reporting hundreds of thousands of job cuts in March.
The true picture, though, is far worse, because the government figures do not include the last two weeks, when nearly 10 million thrown-out-of-work Americans applied for unemployment benefits.
Experts say both numbers are seriously undercounted because of the lack of testing, mild cases that were missed and governments that are underplaying the extent of the crisis.
Europe’s three worst-hit countries — Italy, Spain and France — surpassed 30,000 dead, or over half of the global toll. From those countries, the view remained almost unrelentingly grim, a frightening portent for places like New York, the epicenter of the US outbreak, where bodies are being loaded by forklift into refrigerated trucks outside overwhelmed hospitals.
Spain overtook Italy for the first time on Friday for the number of confirmed coronavirus cases, but the overnight death toll fell from the previous day, providing a small glimmer of hope.
With a total 117,710 confirmed cases, Spain is now second in the number of infections only to the United States, which has a population some seven times larger. Spain’s total death toll now stands at 10,935, second only to Italy, with 13,915 fatalities.
On a happier note, Friday marked the first time in more than a week that the number of deaths fell from the previous day, to 932 fatalities from 950.
“The increase in the number of cases today is 7%, which confirms the reduction trend we’ve been observing,” said Maria Jose Rallo, the deputy head of health emergency. That is down from a 20% increase one week ago.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has imposed one of Europe’s strictest lockdowns, leaving only employees in essential sectors such as health free to travel to and from work. Restaurants, bars and shops are shuttered, and social gatherings are banned.
Shortages of critical equipment led to fierce competition among buyers from Europe, the US and elsewhere. A regional leader in Paris described the scramble to find masks a “worldwide treasure hunt.” Gov. Andrew Cuomo warned that New York could run out of ventilators in six days.
With more than 245,000 people infected in the US and the death toll topping 6,000, sobering preparations were underway. The Federal Emergency Management Agency asked the Pentagon for 100,000 more body bags.
In Florida, hundreds of passengers on a cruise ship where four people died were finally being allowed to disembark after a days-long standoff. More than a dozen critically ill patients were taken to hospitals, while people healthy enough to travel were taken to the airport for chartered flights home.
One Spanish hospital turned its library into an intensive care unit. In France, space was set aside for bodies in a vast food market. The French prime minister said he is “fighting hour by hour” to ward off shortages of essential drugs used to keep COVID-19 patients alive.
Philippe Montravers, an anesthesiologist in Paris, said medics are preparing to fall back on older drugs such as the opiates fetanyl and morphine that had fallen out of favor, because newer painkillers are in short supply.
Elsewhere in Europe, officials began talking tentatively about how to lift lockdowns that have staved off the total collapse of strained health systems but also battered economies.
More than 250,000 European Union citizens are still trying to get home, as the number of people stranded by the coronavirus outbreak remains high even after the EU has repatriated some 350,000 people, its top diplomat said on Friday.
Agencies