GENEVA/TOKYO – The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday that the United States could become the global epicentre of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which finally forced reluctant organisers to postpone the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics.
Britain joined the ranks of countries in lockdown to try to hold back the virus, and data showed business activity collapsing from Australia and Japan and Western Europe at a record pace in March, with the United States showing expected to be just as dire.
“The coronavirus outbreak represents a major external shock to the macro outlook, akin to a large-scale natural disaster,” analysts at BlackRock Investment Institute said.
But amid the gathering gloom, the Chinese province of Hubei, where the virus was first identified in December, said it would lift travel restrictions on people leaving the region as the epidemic eases there.
Confirmed coronavirus cases around the world exceeded 377 000 across 194 countries and territories as of early Tuesday, according to a Reuters tally, more than 16 500 of them fatal.
In Geneva, WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris told reporters there had been a “very large acceleration” in infections in the United States.
Over the previous 24 hours, 85 per cent of new cases were in Europe and the United States, and of those, 40 percent were in the United States.
As of Monday, the virus had infected more than 42 000 people there, killing at least 559.
Asked whether the United States could become the new epicenter, Harris said: “We are now seeing a very large acceleration in cases in the United States So it does have that potential.”
Some US state and local officials have decried a lack of coordinated federal action, saying that having localities act on their own has put them in competition for supplies.
(Reuters)
