The coronavirus could infect a quarter of a billion Africans and put intolerable pressure on the continent’s fragile health system, a new World Health Organisation report said on Friday, as the pandemic’s global death toll topped 300,000.
Despite fears of a second wave of infections, borders began opening up in Europe and lockdowns continued to ease as governments try to get stalled economies moving again, with experts warning world output could shrink by 10 percent.
And Donald Trump ramped up his war of words with Beijing over responsibility for what he has dubbed the “Plague from China”, threatening to cut ties between the two countries. But it was the very human cost of the disease that was thrown into sharp relief with the discovery of infections in the world’s biggest refugee camp, where upwards of a million Rohingya live in squalor.
“We are looking at the very real prospect that thousands of people may die from COVID-19” in these camps, Save The Children’s Bangladesh health director Shamim Jahan said.
