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The human and economic toll of the lockdowns against the coronavirus mounted Thursday as India struggled to feed the multitudes, Italy shut down most of its industry, and a record-shattering 3.3 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits in a single week. The U.S. surpassed official Chinese government numbers to become the country with most reported infections.
As the number of cases worldwide topped a half-million and deaths climbed past 24,000, the damage to people's livelihoods and their well-being from the effort to flatten the rising curve started to come into focus.
In India, where the country's 1.3 billion people were under orders to stay home, legions of poor were suddenly thrown out of work, and many families were left struggling for something to eat.
"Our first concern is food, not the virus," said Suresh Kumar, 60, a bicycle rickshaw rider in New Delhi whose family of six relies on his daily earnings of $4. "I don't know how I will manage."
India has the world's second-highest number of people living in extreme poverty, with produce peddlers, maids and other low-wage workers living day to day. The government announced a $22 billion economic stimulus package to deliver monthly rations of grain and lentils to 800 million people.
Around the globe, the death toll rose to about 8,200 in Italy, 4,300 in Spain and 1,700 in France. The U.S. had about 1,300 deaths, about 400 of them in New York State. Most of those victims were in New York City, where hospitals are getting swamped.
A running count kept by Johns Hopkins University showed the United States now had the most reported cases of any country Thursday, with more than 85,000. Italy and China, the latter of which was the origin of the outbreak late last year, both had reported more than 80,000.
Louisiana was quickly becoming another smoldering hotspot. The number of new cases there jumped by more than 500 Thursday, for a total of more than 2,300, with 86 deaths, including a 17-year-old, the health department said.
President Donald Trump, meanwhile, announced federal officials are developing guidelines to rate counties by risk of virus spread, as he aims to ease the restrictions meant to slow the outbreak.
Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said the task force is concerned about certain counties in the Midwest that appear to be seeing a rapid increase in cases.
In other developments:
New York state's death toll jumped by 100 in one day, pushing the number to 385, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. He added that experts expect the number to increase as critically ill patients who have been on ventilators for several days succumb to the virus. "That is a situation where people just deteriorate over time," Cuomo said.
China's National Health Commission on Friday reported 55 new cases of the virus, including 54 it said were imported infections in recent arrivals from overseas. Once again, there were no new cases reported in Wuhan, the provincial capital where the coronavirus emerged in December. China said it is temporarily barring most foreigners from entering as it tries to curb imported cases.
In the Mideast, Saudi Arabia announced a total lockdown on the capital, Riyadh, and Islam's two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina, in addition to a nationwide curfew.
So far, more than 120,000 people have recovered, according to the Johns Hopkins University tally.