WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has ordered thousands of emergency hospital beds set up at American coronavirus hotspots.“We’re at war, in a true sense we’re at war,” Trump said as he ordered emergency medical stations with 4,000 beds to be deployed to California and other worst-hit areas.
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More than a third of Americans are under various forms of lockdown, including in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, but the number of infections in the United States has continued to climb.
Highlighting the desperation inside the world’s biggest economy, the mayor of New York said his city was just 10 days away from running out of ventilators.
Markets in Asia began Monday in the red as they absorbed the US’ failed trillion-dollar stimulus effort and the barrage of other bad news from across the world over the weekend.
“This is the biggest economic shock our nation has faced in generations,” Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said as he warned the pandemic could lead to a crisis akin to the 1930s Great Depression.
As the pandemic overwhelms hospitals, doctors are having to quickly prioritise patients based on their chances of survival, inflicting a huge moral burden.
“We go into medicine to heal people. Not to make choices about who can live,” said Philippe Devos, an anesthesiologist in Belgium.
The virus emerged in China late last year, after first being detected at a market that sold wild animals for human consumption in the central city of Wuhan.
China has since sought to sow doubts over whether the virus began in Wuhan, while portraying itself as a saviour in the global fight and a role model for quarantines.
However, Beijing’s communist leaders have also been criticised at home and abroad for a perceived lack of transparency, particularly at the start of the outbreak. Trump has been among those critics and angered China by branding it the “Chinese virus”.
On Sunday he complained again about a lack of information and transparency from Beijing.
“They should have told us about this,” Trump said. “I’m a little upset with China. I’ll be honest with you.”
There are fears across Asia of “imported” cases from Europe and other hotspots. –AFP
