Virus mars Easter holidays as deaths near 1,00,000

The Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris is holding a special Good Friday ceremony in the charred, gutted interior of the medieval landmark. But the event is closed to the public due to strict virus confinement measures.

Rome: Hundreds of millions of people around the world will spend the Easter holiday at home as lockdown measures intensify to combat the coronavirus, a pandemic with a global death toll rapidly approaching 1,00,000.

Easter pilgrimage sites across the Middle East, Europe and Asia stood empty on Friday, shorn of the customary holiday hustle.

Even such hallowed traditions as the pontiff's Easter message are being revamped -- Pope Francis will live-stream from the seclusion of his private library.

"We have to respond to our confinement with all our creativity," said the pontiff. "We can either get depressed and alienated... or we can get creative."

The Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, nearly destroyed by fire a year ago, is holding a special Good Friday ceremony in the charred, gutted interior of the medieval landmark. But the event is closed to the public for two reasons: France’s strict virus confinement measures forbid religious or any other gatherings, and the cathedral remains too structurally unstable to let parishioners inside.

Governments have forced businesses to close and limited the movement of half the world's population, halting economic activity and prompting the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to warn that the world faces its worst downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Some 17 million Americans have so far lost their jobs, prompting the US government to launch a $2.3 trillion rescue package, while the European Union late on Thursday struck a 500-billion euro deal to help hard-hit member states.

The US is now emerging as the global hotspot of the virus. More than 1,700 people died on Thursday from almost 5,00,000 cases, the second-highest death toll of any country and the largest number of cases anywhere in the world.

PTI