Faced with the second wave of the Covid-19 epidemic, the largest American city, New York, forces its bars and restaurants to close at 10 p.m. from Friday, while Greece, already confined, begins to apply in plus a curfew.
The number of hospitalized Covid-19 patients is at its highest in the United States since the start of the pandemic, at more than 65,000 according to the Covid Tracking Project. And the virus has killed at least 242,621 nationwide, according to a count from Johns Hopkins University.
New restrictions are beginning to be decreed at the local level, in the absence of instructions from Donald Trump’s federal government.
In New York State, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that all establishments licensed to sell alcohol, including bars and restaurants, should close at 10 p.m.
Some states and cities have also started to encourage their inhabitants to stay at home.
Like Chicago – the third most populous city in the United States – which on Thursday asked its 2.7 million inhabitants to stay at home, except to get to work, school or for some essential activities, without that the measure be coercive.
“Residents are strongly advised not to receive any guest at their homes, to cancel traditional Thanksgiving holidays, and to avoid traveling,” said the text published by the city of Chicago.
More than 10,000 new deaths linked to the new coronavirus were recorded in 24 hours, worldwide on Wednesday, according to the count made by AFP Thursday at 11:00 GMT.
Almost half were announced in Europe (4,961), 1,868 in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 1,330 others in the United States.
– Hotels for Covid patients in Italy –
In Europe, a sign of hope came Thursday from Germany, where the Robert Koch health watch institute spoke of “first signs” of improvement in the infection curve.
“The curve is flattening,” said the director of the Institute, Lothar Wieler, while warning against any relaxation of behavior in Germany, where bars, restaurants and many public facilities are closed for a month.
But many countries remained in the red, and all week new restrictions were announced on the continent.
In Greece, already re-confined and overwhelmed by a “tsunami” of victims of the coronavirus according to the Prime Minister, a night curfew is imposed from Friday between 9:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. local time. Only travel for work and health reasons is authorized.
Since the end of October, the daily death toll has quadrupled to 42 deaths on Wednesday, and that of infections has doubled to nearly 3,000 in one day.
The whole country has been re-confined from Saturday until November 30, with only stores of “essential” products remaining open, mainly supermarkets and pharmacies.
Portugal, for its part, on Thursday widened the area affected by its health restrictions. Slovenia has banned almost all gatherings for two weeks. Hungary has imposed partial confinement for at least 30 days since Wednesday.
In France, where a patient with the virus is hospitalized “every 30 seconds”, Prime Minister Jean Castex has ruled out any relaxation of confinement for at least another 15 days.
An antigenic screening test center has been opened at Parisian Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport for passengers coming from countries classified as “red”, to which France asks to provide a test to enter the territory.
In Italy, where the threshold of one million cases has been exceeded, the government has reserved 15,000 hotel beds across the country for Covid patients.
The United Kingdom, the hardest hit country in Europe, exceeded 50,000 deaths on Wednesday, Spain and France being over 40,000 deaths.
The pandemic has killed at least 1,288,083 worldwide since the WHO office in China reported the onset of the disease at the end of December, according to a report established by AFP from official sources on Thursday. at 9:50 p.m. GMT.
More than 52,335,705 cases of infection have been officially diagnosed since the start of the epidemic, of which at least 33,627,195 are now considered cured.
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