NEW YORK: Bars and restaurants in New York will shut early on Friday under fresh curbs designed to slow soaring virus infections as the number of daily deaths across the globe topped 10,000 for the first time since the pandemic began.
Cases are surging across the United States and Europe, with governments forced to take more drastic action despite fears about the devastation inflicted on their economies. Across the planet the disease has now claimed almost 1.3 million lives and infected close to 53 million people since it first emerged in China in December.
In the United States, the country hardest hit by Covid-19, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered all establishments licensed to sell alcohol to close at 10 pm to help save hospitals from becoming overwhelmed. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said he was ready to follow the example of other big US cities and move schools to online only teaching because the daily infection rate was approaching three percent.
But it is even higher in other cities and parts of the United States and Europe are now recording more new virus cases than they had at the height of the first wave in March. The number of cases also surged by 44 percent in the far bigger Brazil and by 58 percent in Japan.
An AFP tally showed the world's daily death toll from the illness eclipsed 10,000 on Friday, while US infections remained above 125,000 a day. The worrying trends forced Illinois Governor JB Pritzker to warn he may have to issue stay-at-home orders for Chicago and the rest of the state if people continued to gather in public.
The latest wave of restrictions come with policymakers worried about how they can persuade people who had only returned to some sort of normal life a few months ago to lose certain freedoms once again.
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