Spain and Italy are pleading for European help as they fight still-surging coronavirus infections amid the continent’s worst crisis since World War II. U.S. authorities urged millions in the hard-hit New York City region to stay home.
Experts say, however, that virus toll numbers across the world are being seriously under-represented due to limited testing and political decisions about which bodies to count. Unlike the U.S., France and Italy do not count deaths that take place in nursing homes or in homes among their virus numbers — even though nursing homes are known to be key coronavirus incubators around the world.
Shocking as that is for Americans, that stopped short of the restrictions imposed in Europe or elsewhere. Parisians are fined if they try to leave the city and South Africans can’t even walk their dog or buy liquor. In Italy, coffins are piling up despite three weeks of strict confinement and burials are being held with only one family member.
But the crisis is pummeling world economies and putting huge strains on national health care systems. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called for a more vigorous response from the 27-nation European Union. European countries have also resisted sharing masks with their neighbors for fear that they, too, will need them in mass quantities soon. Many countries have turned to China, where the outbreak is easing, flying in cargo planes to get masks and other protective medical equipment.
It says a sneeze or cough from an infected person can expel microscopic virus droplets as far as 7-8 meters away and those droplets can be suspended in the air for hours. The researchers said they wanted to warn the public about “the distance, timescale and persistence over which this cloud and its pathological payload can travel.”
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