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Almost 300 million students worldwide faced weeks at home with Italy and India the latest to shut schools over the deadly new coronavirus, as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) urged an all-out global offensive against the epidemic.
More than 95,000 people have been infected and over 3,200 have died worldwide from the virus, which by Thursday had reached more than 80 countries and territories.
The United States’ state of California declared an emergency following its first coronavirus fatality, raising the US death toll to 11 and a cruise ship was kept offshore after passengers and crew members developed symptoms.
Switzerland reported its first death from the outbreak yesterday, while Bosnia confirmed its first cases and Greece’s cases surged after 21 travellers recently returned from a bus trip to Israel and Egypt tested positive for the virus.
Several countries have implemented extraordinary measures, with UNESCO saying on Wednesday that school closures in more than a dozen countries have affected 290.5 million children.
While temporary school closures during crises are not new, UNESCO chief Audrey Azoulay said “the global scale and speed of the current educational disruption is unparalleled and, if prolonged, could threaten the right to education”.
Meanwhile, shelves are being stripped bare of toilet rolls, hand sanitiser and surgical masks everywhere from Japan to France to the United States as panic buying criss-crosses the globe with the coronavirus, defying repeated calls for calm and disrupting supply chains.
