Global efforts to slow spread as toll hits 15K

GLOBAL emergency efforts to slow the Coronavirus pandemic ratcheted up on Monday, with more nations and cities imposing extraordinary lockdowns, as the death toll soared towards 15,000.

From Germany banning gatherings of more than two people, New Zealand announcing a four-week lockdown and Hong Kong shutting its borders to all nonresidents, the new round of containment efforts highlighted a deepening sense of panic around the world.

The Tokyo Olympics slated for July also looked increasingly likely to be postponed, with Canada announcing it would not send athletes to Japan then and Australia saying it was preparing for a one-year delay. In the US, President Donald Trump ordered thousands of emergency hospital beds to be set up at Coronavirus hotspots as a trillion-dollar economic rescue package crashed in the Senate. “We’re at war, in a true sense we’re at war,” Trump said.

ITALY WORST-HIT

A total of 15,189 deaths have been recorded, the majority in Europe with 9,197 fatalities. Italy is the hardest-hit country with 5,476 deaths, followed by China where the virus first emerged last year with 3,270, and Spain with 2,182. With a total of 1,395 new deaths reported in the past 24 hours out of 172,238 officially declared cases, Europe is now the continent where the virus is spreading the most rapidly.

European nations continued to choke people movement, with Greece on Monday morning to follow Italy, Spain and France in imposing a nationwide lockdown. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced the ban on gatherings of more than two people on Sunday. She did so while in quarantine herself because she had met an infected doctor.