[D66] Over 620 deaths in Italy on Friday as coronavirus fatalities surge in Europe

[Antid Oto]

wsws.org:

Over 620 deaths in Italy on Friday as coronavirus fatalities surge in Europe
By Robert Stevens
21 March 2020

Italy, Spain, Belgium and the UK all recorded their largest death tolls 
in the global coronavirus pandemic in a single day, Friday. In Italy, 
which now has the highest number of deaths in the world, a further 627 
people perished taking the total to 4,032 fatalities. Another 5,986 new 
infections were announced in the locked-down country. Some 47,021 people 
have been infected so far, with 2,655 classified as in a “serious, 
critical” condition.

On Thursday, the number of deaths at that stage in Italy (3,405) first 
topped the total coronavirus fatalities recorded in China.

In Spain, the total death toll rose to 1,002 yesterday. This gruesome 
milestone was reached as 235 died over the previous 24 hours. Almost 
20,000 cases (19,980) have been recorded in Spain, with more than a 
third in the capital, Madrid. Army specialists are to begin entering 
care homes to help with disinfection. The virus has claimed more than 50 
lives at elderly care facilities across the Madrid region.

In Belgium, 16 more people died, bringing the total to 37, with more 
than 2,000 cases of infection.

With the virus being largely contained in China, as the result of a mass 
lockdown, Europe is the new epicentre. As of Friday evening, 6,057 had 
died in 40 European countries, and Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, with 
1,044 new deaths reported. 129,216 people have been infected across the 
continent, with 17,852 new infections yesterday.

The terrible impact of COVID-19 was graphically seen in a five minute 
video report posted Friday by Sky News, the first journalists allowed to 
film inside the main hospital in Bergamo, northern Italy, where the 
number of dead has surged faster than authorities and churches can bury 
or cremate them.

The film includes harrowing scenes of close-to-death patients struggling 
for life in a crowded hospital with the few staff available doing 
everything possible to save them. A shocked reporter narrates, “They are 
fighting a war here and they are losing. The sheer numbers of people 
succumbing to the coronavirus is overwhelming every hospital in northern 
Italy.

“The staff are working flat out trying to keep their patients from 
deteriorating further. They are trying to stop them from dying.”

Patients are shown wearing “plastic bubbles that fit over the heads of 
the most ill, staff struggle to communicate with patients. The bubbles 
are attempting to equalise the air pressure in the lungs.”

The reporter comments, “It looks like an intensive care unit (ICU), but 
it is actually just an emergency arrivals ward. The ICU is full.”

The only way that new patients can “qualify” for treatment on the ward 
is to be “actually on the point of death, not just gravely ill. In this 
pandemic, gravely ill is considered a reasonable position. It really is 
that bad.”

Such images attest to the failure of an entire system, capitalism.

In France, a further 78 people died, bringing the total to 450. 
Coronavirus infections are doubling every four days, the French health 
directorate reports. On Friday, 1,617 new cases were recorded, for a 
total of 12,612.

In Germany, 15 died with 59 fatalities reached. New cases were recorded 
at 4,391 bringing the total to 19,711. In the Netherlands, 30 people 
died with total deaths now at 106. There were 534 new cases, bringing 
the total to 2,994.

In the UK, deaths rose by 40 to 177—the largest rise in a single day 
since the outbreak. The infection toll now stands at almost 4,000 with 
714 new infections reported.

With 18 of the new deaths recorded in London, the capital is the 
epicentre of the pandemic in the UK. Hospitals are unable to cope with 
the huge rise in cases. London's Northwick Park hospital declared a 
“critical incident” yesterday after running out of critical care beds. 
The Guardian reported it had seen unpublished figures showing that the 
“number of people confirmed or suspected to have Covid-19 being treated 
in an intensive care unit in hospitals in south London rose from seven 
on Friday 6 March to 93 on Tuesday 17 March—a fifteenfold increase in 12 
days.”

Due to the escalation of the crisis in Britain, in the space of a few 
days Boris Johnson’s Conservative government has gone from doing 
virtually nothing over the pandemic—as it advocated a policy of letting 
the entire population be infected to supposedly acquire “herd 
immunity”—to imposing firstly social distancing measures and yesterday 
ordering closed all cafes, bars, pubs, restaurants, nightclubs, 
theatres, gyms, cinemas and leisure centres.

Under conditions in which hundreds of thousands of workers have already 
been laid off or had their hours slashed and pay cut, for many by up to 
50 percent, the ruling elite fears a massive social and political 
backlash. Up to a quarter of the UK workforce—around 10 million 
workers—are employed in retail and sectors that have seen a collapse in 
trade. Yesterday, the Arcadia retail chain, with 1,000 employees and 
owned by billionaire Sir Philip Green, announced the closure of every 
store in the UK. Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary said that his entire 
workforce would have to take a 50 percent wage cut as the airline—with 
cash and other reserves of over €4 billion—prepared to ground most of 
its fleet and reduce capacity by 80 percent in April and May. Every 
other airline continent wide is imposing similar measures.

In response Friday, Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced measures 
“unprecedented in the history of the British state” centred on rolling 
out a “Job Retention Scheme” whereby all employers retaining staff would 
be able to claim 80 percent of their wages from the government at up to 
£2,500 a month. The move follows that of the Danish government, which 
rolled out a similar scheme to cover 75 percent of workers’ wages in the 
private sector.

The total number of COVID-19 infections in Europe is undoubtably far 
larger than any of the reported figures due to the fact that virtually 
no testing is being done on a systematic scale in any European country. 
According to estimates from leading UK scientists, up to 180,000 people 
in Britain alone may already be infected with COVID-19--based on 
estimates that there are 1,000 cases for every one death.

Without extensive quarantining and rigorous testing, all global 
experience demonstrates that the virus cannot be combated.

This is proven by several studies conducted during the pandemic. This 
week, it was reported that due to the testing and retesting of all 3,300 
inhabitants of the small town of Vò, near Venice, all new infections in 
the town were halted. Vò was the location of the first coronavirus death 
in Italy on February 22.

The Financial Times reported that the testing of all residents, 
“regardless of whether they were exhibiting symptoms, and rigorous 
quarantining of their contacts once infection was confirmed,” meant 
“health authorities have been able to completely stop the spread of the 
illness there.”

The first testing round, carried out in late February, found 3 percent 
of the population infected, though half of the carriers had no symptoms. 
After they were isolated, a second testing round 10 days later showed 
the infection rate had dropped to 0.3 percent. This second round 
identified at least six individuals who had the virus but showed no 
symptoms, meaning they could be quarantined.

This has major implications and lessons for every country. Professor 
Andrea Crisanti, an infections expert at Imperial College London, who is 
taking part in the Vò study, contrasted this approach to Britain’s where 
just 66,976 people have been tested nationwide out of a population of 66 
million. “In the UK, there are a whole lot of infections that are 
completely ignored… We were able to contain the outbreak here because we 
identified and eliminated the ‘submerged’ infections and isolated them. 
That is what makes the difference.