NEW
YORK (AP) — The worldwide race to protect people against unwitting
coronavirus carriers intensified Thursday, pitting governments against
each other in the race to buy protective gear and prompting new
questions about who should wear masks, get temperature checks or even be
permitted to go outside.
In the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the pandemic began in December, a green symbol
on their smartphones dictates the movements of residents. Green is the
“health code” that says a user is symptom-free and it’s required to
board a subway, check into a hotel or enter the central city of 11
million. Serious travel restrictions still exist for those who have
yellow or red symbols.
In
northern Italy, the country with the most virus deaths in the world at
over 13,000, guards armed with thermometer guns decide who can enter
supermarkets. In Los Angeles, the mayor has recommended that the city’s 4
million people wear masks.
And
a top health official in France’s hard-hit eastern region said
Americans swooped in at a Chinese airport to spirit away a planeload of
masks that France had already ordered by.
“On
the tarmac, the Americans arrive, take out cash and pay three or four
times more for our orders, so we really have to fight,” Jean Rottner, an
emergency room doctor in Mulhouse told RTL radio.
A study by researchers in Singapore
on Wednesday estimated that around 10% of new infections may be sparked
by people who carry the virus but have not yet suffered its flu-like
symptoms.
In
response, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed
how it defined the risks of infection, saying essentially that anyone
may be a carrier, whether they have symptoms or not. It is yet to change
its guidance against having everyone wearing masks.
But from New York to Los Angeles, U.S. officials warned that the worst is ahead.
“How
does it end? And people want answers,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.
“I want answers. The answer is nobody knows for sure.”
New York state’s coronavirus death toll doubled in 72 hours
to more than 1,900. Cuomo has already complained that U.S. states are
competing against each other for protective gear and breathing machines,
or being outbid by the federal government.
President Donald Trump acknowledged that the federal stockpile is nearly depleted of personal protective equipment used by doctors and nurses.
“We’re
going to have a couple of weeks, starting pretty much now, but
especially a few days from now, that are going to be horrific,” he said.
Los
Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said even a “tucked-in bandanna” could slow
the spread of the virus and remind people to keep their distance.
“I know it will look surreal,” he said, donning a mask. “We’re going to have to get used to seeing each other like this.”
In
Greece, authorities placed an entire refugee camp under quarantine
Thursday after discovering that a third of the 63 contacts of an
infected woman tested positive for the virus — and none showed symptoms.
Altogether,
close to 940,000 people around the world have contracted the virus,
according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. More than 47,000 have
died from the virus and another 195,000 have recovered.
The
real figures are believed to be much higher because of testing
shortages, differences in counting the dead and large numbers of mild
cases that have gone unreported. Critics say some governments have been
deliberately under-reporting cases in order to avoid public criticism.
As
hot spots flared in New Orleans and Southern California, the nation’s
biggest city, New York, was the hardest hit of them all, with bodies
loaded onto refrigerated morgue trucks by forklifts outside overwhelmed
hospitals.
”It’s
like a battlefield behind your home,” said 33-year-old Emma Sorza, who
could hear the sirens from the swamped Elmhurst Hospital in Queens.
Cuomo
said projections suggest the crisis in New York will peak at the end of
April, with a high death rate continuing through July.
For
most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as
fever and cough. But for others, especially older adults and people with
health problems, it can cause severe symptoms like pneumonia and lead
to death.
Asian
stocks meandered Thursday after a White House warning that as many as
240,000 Americans might die in the pandemic sent Wall Street tumbling.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost more than 970 points, or over 4%.
Many
countries are now modeling their response to the virus in part after
China, which in January closed off an entire province of over 70 million
people. The government says the measures have been a success and
reports that nearly all new cases of the virus have been imported from
abroad.
People
in Wuhan, once the epicenter of the crisis, are starting to return to
work, tracked by a smartphone app that shows if they are symptom free.
Walking
into a subway station Wednesday, Wu Shenghong, a manager for a clothing
manufacturer, used her phone to scan a barcode on a poster that
triggered her app. A green code and part of her identity card number
appeared on the screen. A guard wearing a mask and goggles waved her
through.
If the
code had been red, that would tell the guard that Wu was confirmed to
be infected or had a fever or other symptoms and was awaiting a
diagnosis. A yellow code would mean she had contact with an infected
person but hadn’t finished a two-week quarantine, meaning she should be
in a hospital or quarantined.
In
Europe, the strains facing some of the world’s best health care systems
has been aggravated by hospital budget cuts over the past decade in
Italy, Spain, France and Britain. They have called in medical students,
retired doctors and even laid-off flight attendants with first aid
training to help their country’s overstressed medical workers.
The
staffing shortage has been worsened by the high numbers of infected
personnel, many of whom are working without protective gear. In Italy
alone, nearly 10,000 medical workers have contracted the virus and more
than 60 doctors have died.
___
Hinnant reported from Paris. Associated Press writers around the world contributed to this report.
