Coronavirus Cases in China Decline as Number of Deaths in Italy Surge

The death toll in Italy surged past China’s death toll on Thursday, according to the Associated Press.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. the Army started making plans to set up mobile military hospitals to be placed in major cities. Other medical centers in the U.S. are setting up drive-thru testing sites.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at the United Nations in New York that the world is “at war with a virus” and that “a global recession, perhaps of record dimensions, is a near certainty.”

“If we let the virus spread like wildfire — especially in the most vulnerable regions of the world – it would kill millions of people,” he said.

In Italy, which has a population of 60 million, there have been more than 3,400 deaths, about 150 more than in China, which boasts a population over 20 times larger.

However, Wuhan, the Chinese city where coronavirus first emerged, has since recorded no new infections.

Health officials have said Italy’s high death toll is because of the city’s population of elderly people. Italy has the second-oldest population in the world, and about 87 percent of its dead have been over 70 years old.

Meanwhile, Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit, a virologist at Germany’s Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine said the death rate is also because of a “collapse” of Italy’s health system.

There have also been reports of people still using public…