|
 In
all likelihood the COVID-19 illness associated with the new
coronavirus will claim its 100,000th death during the next 24 hours.
From the report of the first fatality in early January, it took a
month to record 1,000 deaths and a further month to hit 10,000. That
was just three weeks ago.
The death toll now compares with that of London's Great Plague in
the mid-1660s, which killed an estimated 100,000 people, about a
third of the city’s population at the time.
But it is still far short of the so-called Spanish flu, which began
in 1918 and is estimated to have killed more than 20 million people
by the time it ended in 1920.
(Open https://tmsnrt.rs/3aIRuz7 in a separate browser for an
interactive graphic to track the global spread.)
A very European compromise
Europe's finance ministers put the phone down on each other last
night having achieved a compromise agreement on half a trillion
euros' worth of support for their coronavirus-battered economies -
but left open the question of how to finance recovery in the bloc
headed for a steep recession.
The controversy over whether - as countries in southern Europe had
sought - members of the eurozone could issue joint debt has also
been left until another day.
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Relax? Don't
U.S. state and public health officials are doubling down on their message that
Americans must resist the impulse to ease social separation measures at the
first glimpse of progress now being seen in the coronavirus battle.
Calls for heightened vigilance, countering talk from the Trump administration of
reopening the economy next month, came as new evidence emerged that stay-at-home
restrictions were working to flatten the arc of infections in New York state,
the U.S. epicentre of the pandemic.
Virtual Easter
This Easter weekend, chocolate-makers of the world will miss out on what is one
of their biggest sales bonanzas of the year.
With big family gatherings off limits, friends and relatives are unable to meet
and hand over Easter egg treats, and chocolate makers' online sites are
struggling to keep up with demand for deliveries.
Easter eggs are on sale in shops but those customers who do venture out have
been focused more on stocking up on basics such as pasta and tinned food.
(Compiled by Mark John; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
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