With borders slamming shut, schools and businesses closing and increasingly drastic restrictions on movement in place, tens of millions of people were hunkered down Tuesday, heeding government calls to isolate themselves and slow the spread of the new coronavirus.
From Southeast Asia to Europe to the Americas, people found their lives upended by lockdowns and social distancing.
Shoppers in Malaysia stood in long lines to stock up at picked-over supermarkets. Commuters in the Philippines waited in huge traffic jams at checkpoints set up to take their temperatures before entering the capital city. Officials in seven San Francisco Bay Area counties issued a sweeping shelter-in-place mandate, ordering millions of residents to stay at home and go outside only for food, medicine and outings that are absolutely essential.
The cancellations of treasured holidays and community events continued to build, with Thailand saying it was calling off its water festival in April and the organizers of the so-called “most exciting two minutes in sports”— the Kentucky Derby — reportedly prepared to announce the delay the horse race for the first time since World War II.
Fresh moves to contain the virus came even as Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the virus was first detected late last year and which has been under lockdown for weeks, reported just one new case on Tuesday.
The fronts in the battle have clearly shifted outside China, with its caseload now outnumbered by those outside its borders. And Spain is now the fourth-most infected country, surpassing South Korea, where new cases have been subsiding.
Source: Read Full Article