PARIS The coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 25,000 people in Europe, according to an AFP tally at 1230 GMT Monday taken from official sources. With a total of 25,037 deaths out of 399,381 officially declared cases, Europe is now the continent with the highest toll from COVID-19. Italy has 10,779 deaths and Spain 7,340, making them the two most affected countries globally with more than three quarters of the deaths in Europe. Spain confirmed another 812 deaths in 24 hours from the coronavirus on Monday, a slight decline on the previous day’s toll, bringing the total number of deaths to 7,340. The country, which has the world’s second most deadly outbreak after Italy, recorded 838 deaths from the pandemic on Sunday, its third straight daily record for coronavirus deaths. The percentage increase in the number of deaths on Monday over the previous day was 12.4 percent, less than half the increase of 27 percent recorded on Wednesday. The growth in the number of new confirmed cases also slowed, posting a one-day rise of 8.0 percent to 85,195, according to the health ministry, compared to a 20-percent rise on Wednesday. However, Spain has now joined the United States and Italy in having more cases than China, where the virus first appeared in December and which had confirmed 81,439 cases as of Sunday evening. Spain’s healthcare system is struggling to cope with the surge of seriously ill patients all at once, with hotels and conference centres being used as temporary clinics and Madrid’s largest ice ink turned into a provisional morgue. Russia’s capital became the latest world city to impose a coronavirus lockdown on Monday as declared cases globally topped 700,000 and the planet braced for a drawnout battle against the disease. Worried governments are imposing fresh confinement measures in the face of a spiralling COVID-19 death toll that saw another 800 people die in the last 24 hours in Spain alone. With leaders everywhere warning it will take months to restore normality,Africa’s largest city Lagos was also preparing to join the more than one third of humanity ordered to stay in their homes. Across the globe, desperate hospitals are filling up with patients despite governments imposing the most dramatic changes to the way people live since World War II in a bid to halt the deadly march of the disease. The sweeping measures have wiped out millions of jobs, left economies teetering and rendered once-teeming cities eerily empty, yet there remains no real end in sight to the pandemic. More than 33,000 people have died worldwide and the number of confirmed cases passed 700,000 on Monday, according to an AFP tally. More than 3.38 billion remain under lockdown. In a sign that the world is in for a long haul, President Donald Trump on Sunday extended emergency virus restrictions untilApril 30 for the United States, which now has more confirmed cases than any other nation. “Nothing would be worse than declaring victory before the victory is won,” said Trump, as his top scientist Anthony Fauci warned up to 200,000 people could die there. A charity began setting up a field hospital in New York’s Central Park to help take some of the strain. “The hospitals all over the city are filling up and they need as much help as they can get,” said Elliott Tenpenny, a doctor and team leader for Samaritan’s Purse COVID-19 Response Team.—Agencies
