Faced with the explosion of cases of coronavirus throughout the United States, New York was preparing on Saturday to close its schools, at a time when reconfigured Europe is experiencing a slight improvement on the front of the epidemic which has caused more than 1 , 3 million deaths worldwide.
On the old continent, restrictions are increasing, as in Greece which announced on Saturday the closure of primary schools and nurseries, or in Portugal where a weekend curfew came into effect on Saturday. In Ukraine, non-essential businesses close on Saturday for three weekends.
Elsewhere in the world, the number of contaminations is increasing on all continents, except Oceania. In Lebanon, a “total” containment of the country came into force on Saturday to combat the skyrocketing increase in Covid-19 cases which is affecting hospitals now saturated.
But it is in the United States that the situation is the most worrying: nearly one in five deaths has occurred in this country, the most bereaved in the world with 244,345 deaths for 10,739,614 cases.
The American city most affected by the first wave in the spring, New York has so far resisted its comeback. But the test positivity rate – long remained close to 1% – is now increasing daily and exceeded the critical threshold of 3% for the first time on Friday.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, who reopened public schools at the end of September using a partially face-to-face model, called on parents to “prepare” for their closure on Monday.
– Concern before Thanksgiving –
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo had already announced the closure at 10 p.m. of bars and restaurants. A measure entered into force on Friday and generally well accepted in “the city that never sleeps”, where deconfinement has been very gradual and where most of these establishments were already closing before midnight.
The memory of morgue trucks and tents erected in front of hospitals in March-April, with more than 23,000 deaths recorded in the metropolis, is still in everyone’s mind.
“We will have to close everything,” warned Michael Mina, epidemiologist at Harvard on Friday, during a telephone press briefing. “And if we don’t shut everything down or find something else to do, Thanksgiving is going to lead to another massive explosion of cases.”
But in his first public intervention since the announcement of his presidential defeat on Saturday – which he refuses to recognize – Donald Trump firmly ruled out this hypothesis.
“Whatever happens in the future () this administration will not impose containment,” said the Republican president. Instead, he promised that distributing the first doses of a vaccine to those at risk was “a matter of weeks.”
– Stabilization in Europe –
In total, at least 1,303,783 deaths, for 53,380,442 cases of the new coronavirus have been officially recorded worldwide, according to a count made by AFP on Saturday at 09:30 GMT.
With 284,000 new daily cases, Europe is still the region recording the strongest growth, even if the new contaminations now seem to have stabilized (+ 1%).
However, the authorities almost everywhere dismiss the idea of relaxing these restrictions.
Despite signs of slowing down in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel thus estimated that the epidemic would at least “occupy us all winter”.
France, one of the epicenters of the second wave, is also seeing a slowdown in contamination. But it is too “fragile” to consider lifting the restrictions on December 1, the government said, while 95% of resuscitation capacities are occupied and the “peak” of this wave has not yet been reached.
We will have to “live with the virus over the long term”, warned French Prime Minister Jean Castex, who said he was working on “rules” for the country until the arrival of a vaccine against the new coronavirus, in an interview with the daily Le Monde on Saturday.
In a tweet on Saturday, French President Emmanuel Macron said that “our fight against the epidemic is collective and the coming days will be decisive”.
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