Governments have ordered around 1.7 billion people around the globe to stay indoors. On Tuesday, Britain’s population joined that number as Boris Johnson said, “Stay at home,” on television after the country’s death toll shot up to 335.
The lockdown that Covid-19 is driving almost every country into is a drastic step toward wanting to slow down its accelerating pace.
Delay in imposing a lockdown?
There are accusations that the British government put off shutting down outdoor and business activity for too long. It has been accused that other European states shut down schools much sooner than UK. But now the Johnson government has ordered a three-week lockdown of all non-essential shops and gatherings of more than two people are prohibited.
The Picture in the USA
New York is one of the hard-hit places in the US. Its everyday heavy traffic on Tuesday was just a thin stream of medical staff, grocery and drug store workers.
No one has seen the highly unexpected bond-buying scheme started by the Federal Reserve ever since global finances melted more than ten years ago.
After remarkably having cut down interest rates the Reserve announced it will buy bulks of Treasury debt. It said it will loan out to small and medium businesses that have been at the short end of the stick with the nationwide lockdown.
With a re-election coming up in November, Trump says he wants the country to be open to business just like it was always meant to be. He says he wants the lockdown to end as soon as it can be done. Although US politicians have not been able to push ahead a $2 trillion package which Trump says would help faltering enterprises and American families. The government’s critics say the package favours bailing out larger firms more than smaller ones.
Psychological Trauma
Lauren, a psychologist who declined to give her surname, while strolling through deserted New York streets felt that a lockdown like this would force anxiety and depression into people’s minds and make them grow gloomy moods.
She said she was afraid for herself and her patients that if the virus kept spreading and people had to stay confined in homes for too long it would have unhealthy mental repercussions.
There are dismal and somber stories doing the rounds in this global lockdown. Some say there are elderly people out in the streets of Spain without anyone to turn to and some of them have been seen dead and abandoned inside retirement homes.
What does the WHO say?
According to global statistics reported by AFP the number of Corona deaths has climbed above 16,500. The number of declared infections in around 174 countries is 378,000.
Starting from the Chinese outbreak in December, the virus infected the first 100,000 in sixty-seven days round the world. The second 100,000 cases sprang up during only eleven days and it was four days to the third 100,000. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has serious news that the pandemic is clearly shooting up on a global scale.
But he said that “We can change the trajectory of this pandemic.” He said the WHO is not a “helpless bystander” in front of countries with poor resources to grapple the spread of the virus.
On the Syrian Front
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has appealed for a worldwide ceasefire after the first virus infection was found in Syria. He said it is essential to protect vulnerable people in war-ravaged zones. He expressed that the “fury of the virus illustrates the folly of war.”
Ray of Hope
The daily death toll in Italy seems to be slowing down. Even so, the country has lost more than 6000 citizens which outnumbers the Chinese count since the virus started killing last year.
But new infections dropped to around 5,000, making it 1,500 less than the day before.
China’s central Hubei province, the global ground zero for Covid-19, is going to lift its ban on travelling after locking down all activity for two months.