Virus deals ends to US hiring; Europe's hospitals buckle

The coronavirus outbreak finally snapped the United States' record-breaking hiring streak of nearly 10 years, while US and European medical workers struggling to save ailing patients Friday watched supplies of medicine, protective equipment and breathing machines dwindle by the hour. Jobs numbers released in the US showed the virus dealt a swift end to the nation's 50-year-low unemployment rate, with employers reporting hundreds of thousands of job cuts in March. The true picture, though, is far worse, because the government figures do not include the last two weeks, when nearly 10 million thrown-out-of-work Americans applied for unemployment benefits.

Worldwide, confirmed infections surged past 1 million and deaths topped 54,000, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. Experts say both numbers are seriously undercounted because of the lack of testing, mild cases that were missed and governments that are underplaying the extent of the crisis.

Europe's three worst-hit countries — Italy, Spain and France — surpassed 30,000 dead, or over half of the global toll. From those countries, the view remained almost unrelentingly grim, a frightening portent for places like New York, the epicenter of the US outbreak, where bodies are being loaded by forklift into refrigerated trucks outside overwhelmed hospitals. Shortages of critical equipment led to fierce competition among buyers from Europe, the US and elsewhere. A regional leader in Paris described the scramble to find masks a “worldwide treasure hunt.” Gov. Andrew Cuomo warned that New York could run out of ventilators in six days.

With more than 245,000 people infected in the US and the death toll topping 6,000, sobering preparations were underway. The Federal Emergency Management Agency asked the Pentagon for 100,000 more body bags. One Spanish hospital turned its library into an intensive care unit. In France, space was set aside for bodies in a vast food market. The French prime minister said he is “fighting hour by hour” to ward off shortages of essential drugs used to keep COVID-19 patients alive.

Philippe Montravers, an anesthesiologist in Paris, said medics are preparing to fall back on older drugs such as the opiates fetanyl and morphine that had fallen out of favor, because newer painkillers are in short supply. “The work is extremely tough and heavy,” he said. “We've had doctors, nurses, caregivers who got sick, infected ... but who have come back after recovering. It's a bit like those World War I soldiers who were injured and came back to fight.” Some glimmers of hope emerged that Italy, with nearly 14,000 dead, as well as Spain and France might be flattening their infection curves and nearing or even passing their peaks in daily deaths.

Spain on Friday reported 932 new daily deaths, slightly down from the record it hit a day earlier. The carnage most certainly included large numbers of elderly who authorities admit are not getting access to the country's limited breathing machines, which are being used first on healthier, younger patients. More than half of Spain's nearly 11,000 deaths have come in the last seven days alone. In a vast exhibition center in Madrid that was hastily converted into a 1,300-bed field hospital, bed No. 01.30 held patient Esteban Pinaredo, age 87.

“I'm good, I love you,” Pinaredo told his family via Skype. “I will run away as soon as I can." The facility's organizer, Antonio Zapatero, said Spain's nationwide lockdown must be maintained. "Otherwise, this is what you are facing,” he said, pointing at the rows of beds.

Elsewhere in Europe, officials began talking tentatively about how to lift lockdowns that have staved off the total collapse of strained health systems but also battered economies. France canceled its high-school exit exam known as the Baccalaureat, a first in the 212-year history of the test.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)