Coronavirus dominates the news and peoples lives. It continues its worldwide spread with most countries trying containment then lockdowns.
On the 6th Boris is taken to hospital after 10 days with a high temperature and within days he is in ICU! He is out on the 10th but doesn’t leave hospital until the 26th. It is estimated that he will need at least two weeks recovery.
Nightingale hospitals (converted arenas to deal with a surge of cases) open in London & Birmingham within 10 days of starting building work.
A local hospital nurse dies.
There are issues over the provision of protective equipment (ppe) to key health workers – the main issue seems to be the requirement for a massive distribution task.
There is no mass volume testing yet. The government commits to 100k/day by month end – which it achieves.
Trump continues to be a clown. His daily briefings becoming marketing exercises for this year’s presidential election. When journalists question his actions his reaction is to attack and abuse them. Maybe this goes down well with his electoral base. On the 14th he stops funding the WHO accusing them of being China centric. One of his more classic moments was the suggestion that they might find a way to inject disinfectant as it is so good at killing the virus. He is pressing for an end to lockdowns so that the economy can restart. Fortunately the state governors are in charge of those decisions.
Spain Norway and Germany start opening their economies by relaxing some of their controls.
Oil demand has collapsed causing the trading price to go negative for a time
Virus status month end:
| 000’s | Cases | Deaths | ||||
| Feb | March | April | Feb | Mar | April | |
| World | 85 | 863 | 1985 | 3 | 43 | 234 |
| China | 78 | 82 | 83 | 3 | 3 | 5 |
| Italy | 3 | 106 | 205 | 0 | 12 | 28 |
| USA | 0 | 193 | 1099 | 0 | 5 | 64 |
| Spain | 0 | 96 | 239 | 0 | 8 | 25 |
| UK | 0 | 22 | 171 | 0 | 2 | 27 |