Virus kills 1L, restricts Easter festivities to home
Rome, April 10
Hundreds of millions of people around the world will spend the Easter holiday at home as lockdown measures intensify to combat the coronavirus, a pandemic with a global death toll rapidly crosses 1,00,000.
Governments have forced businesses to close and limited the movement of half the world’s population, halting economic activity and prompting the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to warn that the world faces its worst downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Some 17 million Americans have so far lost their jobs, prompting the US government to launch a $2.3 trillion rescue package, while the European Union late Thursday struck a $550 billion deal to help hard-hit member states.
The United States is now emerging as the global hotspot of the virus. More than 1,700 people died on Thursday from almost 500,000 cases, bringing its total death toll to the second highest in the world after Italy. It also has the largest number of cases anywhere in the world by far.
More than 1.6 million infections have been recorded globally. Hundreds of deaths across Europe on Thursday helped to drive the confirmed global toll up — it stood at more than 96,000 on Friday — with nearly half of the deaths reported in the past week.
Easter pilgrimage sites across the Middle East, Europe and Asia stood empty on Friday, shorn of the customary Easter holiday hustle.
The fallout is shaking every corner of the financial world, with sectors from travel and tourism to hospitality and arts and culture slammed by the pandemic.
The IMF, which has $1 trillion in lending capacity, said it was responding to calls from 90 countries for emergency financing. — Agencies
