Coronavirus: global cases pass 1.2m as Trump warns US of worse to come

Donald Trump has warned the US the worst is
yet to come in the coronavirus crisis, as global cases of Covid-19 passed 1.2m
and the governor of New York thanked China for donating 1,000 ventilators. The
state recorded 630 deaths on Saturday in its worst day.
“This is a big deal and it’s going to make
a significant difference for us,” said Andrew Cuomo, who has repeatedly warned
that the state’s supply of the vital machines would be exhausted in days if
current trends continued.
Donald Trump used a Saturday press
conference to blame shortages on state governors asking for more supplies than
they needed, and urged Americans to take a little-studied anti-malaria drug,
hydroxychloroquine, as a preventative despite his health expert, Dr Anthony
Fauci, stating there was only “anecdotal evidence” it was of use.
Trump also warned the next two weeks would
be the “toughest” and that there would be “a lot of death”. He would deploy
thousands of military personnel to support the states, the president said.
Cuomo and New York City mayor Bill de Blasio have repeatedly implored the
federal government for more help.
Meanwhile, China saw a slight rise in cases
despite tough restrictions and a ban on foreign arrivals. In Europe, Italy
passed 15,000 deaths, while Spain overtook Italy in terms of cases, recording a
total of more than 126,000, to become the second-worst affected. The US has by
far the most cases, with more than 311,000. Globally, the death toll is
approaching 65,000.
New York state is the centre of the
outbreak in the US, with more than 113,700 confirmed cases as of Saturday
morning. More than 3,500 people statewide have died, and about 15,000
coronavirus patients are in hospital. More than 4,100 are in intensive care where
many, if not all, need ventilators.
The situation is particularly worrying on
Long Island, east of Manhattan, where the number of cases “is like a fire
spreading”, Cuomo told a news conference.
The New York donation was facilitated by
Beijing from billionaires Jack Ma and Joseph Tsai, the co-founders of the
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.
Health experts calculate that New York
might be around a week away from the worst point in the health crisis. Cuomo
said: “We’re not yet at the apex, we’re getting closer … Our reading of the
projections is we’re somewhere in the seven-day range.”
On Friday, Cuomo said he would have the
National Guard collect and redeploy ventilators that some hospitals weren’t
using, and again alluded to the plan on Saturday, but details remained unclear.
China registered 30 new cases for Saturday,
as opposed to 19 the day before. Twenty-five of the latest cases involved
people who had entered from abroad, said the National Health Commission. The
remaining five were new locally transmitted infections, all in the southern
coastal province of Guangdong. The commission said 47 new asymptomatic cases
were reported in the mainland on Saturday, compared with 64 a day earlier.
The mainland has now reported a total of
81,669 cases, while the death toll has risen by three to 3,329.
Mexico’s president announced the country
was seeking to make its own ventilators as cases reached 1,890. Prototypes were
being tested now, said Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Seventy-nine deaths have
been reported so far.
In Hong Kong, about 130 riot police were
placed in quarantine for two weeks after an officer who carried out mass
arrests at a recent protest tested positive, the South China Morning Post
reported.
Australians were warned that “unauthorised
or homemade” virus testing kits were arriving in the country. Two hundred
arrived in Perth last month, and dozens more have turned up in Melbourne, all
from mainland China or Hong Kong. However, there is cautious optimism that
lockdown efforts are having an effect.
Japan is hoping to triple production of
anti-flu drug Avignan, the drug China is testing as a Covid-19 treatment,
Reuters reports. The increase would mean the drug, owned by Fujifilm Holding
Corp and also known as Favipiravir, could treat 2 million people this fiscal
year.
New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern
criticised “idiots” who ignored the country’s stringent lockdown measures, as
it reported its 1,00th case of the virus. The island nation, which moved
quickly to restrict movements, has recorded one death so far.
In New York, the city’s hospitals and
morgues are struggling to treat the desperately ill and bury the dead.
Crematories have extended their hours and worked into the night, and city
officials are looking for temporary interment sites elsewhere in the state.
Because of the risk of infection, many
people with critically ill relatives in the city are unable to see their loved
ones in their final hours. A resident at New York-Presbyterian hospital said he
and his colleagues had made several death notification phone calls every shift
this week. “There’s something sort of unquantifiably painful about telling a
family their loved one died without letting them see them,” he said.