LONDON The global death toll in the coronavirus crisis has soared past 60,000, AFP reported.The latest milestone came as Britain recorded a new daily high in fatalities, including a fiveyear-old child believed to be the nation’s youngest Covid-19 victim. Spain, which is under a near-total lockdown, saw a second successive daily fall in coronavirus-related deaths with 809 fatalities. The total number of deaths in the country now stands at 11,744, second only to Italy. The United States recorded nearly 1,500 deaths from Covid-19 between Thursday and Friday, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, the worst 24-hour death toll globally since the pandemic began. With 1,480 deaths counted between 8:30pm (0030 GMT) Thursday and the same time Friday, according to the university’s continuously updated figures, the total number of people who have died since the start of the pandemic in the United States is now 7,406. Surging deaths in New York City and New Orleans showed that a wave of lethal coronavirus infections expected to overwhelm hospitals, even in relatively affluent, urban areas with extensive healthcare systems, has begun to crash down on the United States. Governors, mayors and physicians have voiced alarm for weeks over crippling scarcities of personal protective gear for first-responders and front-line healthcare workers, as well as ventilators and other medical supplies. With the federal government’s national strategic stockpile of such equipment nearly depleted, states have been forced essentially to compete against each other on the open market for vital resources.–AFP
