'Tip of the iceberg:' Nations struggle to count virus toll
Source: AP
By ARITZ PARRA, MIKE CORDER and KEN MORITSUGU 22 minutes ago
BEIJING (AP) — China acknowledged Friday that the coronavirus death toll for the epicenter of Wuhan was 50% higher than previously reported — a major revision that underscored how countries facing an unprecedented public health crisis are struggling to keep accurate counts of the pandemic’s true toll.
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As virus deaths mounted — with the United States reporting the nation’s highest daily death toll yet at nearly 4,600 — the economic devastation from lockdowns designed to curb the coronavirus is becoming even more shocking.
Unemployment in the United States rose 5.2 million, bringing the four-week total to a staggering 22 million workers. China’s economy shrank 6.8% in the quarter ending in March from the same period a year ago, its worst contraction since before market-style economic reforms began in 1979. And in Europe, car sales tanked 55% last month amid the lockdowns, a drop twice as steep as during the 2008-09 global financial crisis.
Authorities and experts say both infections and virus deaths have been under-reported almost everywhere. Thousands of people have died with COVID-19 symptoms — many in nursing homes, which have been ravaged by a disease that hits the elderly the hardest — without ever being tested. Four months into the outbreak, nations are still struggling to lift their testing capacities — and many are still far from their announced goals.
Spain on Friday ordered the country’s 17 autonomous regions to unify the criteria on counting the dead from the pandemic. Spain has counted more than 19,000 virus deaths out of more than 182,000 infections, but the system leaves out the patients who died with symptoms but were not tested..................
Read more: https://apnews.com/a4ec3cc7888ff2d58b5618e9f890b9c6
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