5 must-read coronavirus global headline stories from around the world on April 29th, 2020.
1. US death toll passes those lost by country in Vietnam War
The most unpopular war the US had ever been involved in ended more than 40 years ago.
Vietnam is not a piece of the country’s history it seeks to often remember.
Especially considering about 58,220 Americans lost their lives during the conflict.
But this week, many Americans reflected on that figure, because the coronavirus death toll has now surpassed it.
The U.S now have over 60,000 deaths from COVID-19 with over 23,000 in New York alone.
2. Australian toddler gets coronavirus
NSW today confirmed a four-year-old had been diagnosed with COVID-19 along with 10 others cases that day.
The four-year-old attended a childcare facility for two days while infectious, NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant said.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said despite the possibility of young children getting the virus, the advice remained they were still much less likely to spread the disease.
“Undoubtedly there will be individual cases (among children), that’s I don’t think of itself a surprise,” he said.
Read more: Australia sees one of its youngest coronavirus patients confirmed
3. Australia Post employs 600 new casuals to keep up with rising demand of parcel delivery
Who ever said online shopping never helped anyone?
The influx of people having products and goods delivered means Australia Post experienced a huge surge in demand over the last few weeks, prompting to employ hundreds of casuals.
Parcel deliveries have continued averaged almost two million parcels per day since just before Easter.
These volumes have almost doubled in the last four weeks, up by 90 per cent compared to last year.
However, the increase in demand has caused significant delays, with Australia Post assuring customers they were working to keep up.
Read more: Hundreds of new jobs created as demand for parcel delivery skyrockets
4. Study suggests spread of coronavirus could have been cut by 95 percent if China had handled outbreak differently
Britains University of South Hampton built a simulation based on data from the outbreak, and tested different scenarios of the oubtreak.
In one of them, China put in place containment measures at the beginning of January, with the results shockingly different to the reality of what happened.
Professor Andrew Tatem said while China could not have stopped the pandemic, it could have slowed the transmission in the virus epicentre of Wuhan by 95 per cent.
Read more: How China could have handled the virus differently and what the world would look like if it had
5. China injects $600 billion to revive infrastructure growth
After its powerhouse economy took a major blow from the sweeping lockdowns put in place across the country, China has set to invest almost $600 billion in infrastructure projects to get things going again.
Economists expect local governments across the country to issue as much as 4 trillion yuan ($565 billion), roughly twice last year’s total, on projects.
Major infrastructure works, like a modern bullet train stations put on pause for weeks in Heze in Shandong, have restarted and are already nearing completion.
Read more: China expected to splash out on infrastructure to save its economy
More coronavirus coverage on SoPerth.com.au:
