ROME — The death toll in Italy from the coronavirus overtook China’s on Thursday, and infections in the United States climbed past 10,000, in a stark illustration of how the crisis has pivoted toward the West.

Italy, with a population of 60 million, recorded at least 3,405 deaths, or roughly 150 more than in China — a country with a population over 20 times larger.

Italy reached the bleak milestone the same day that Wuhan, the Chinese city where the coronavirus first emerged three months ago, recorded no new infections, a sign that the communist country’s draconian lockdowns were effective in containing the scourge.

On Thursday, a visiting Chinese Red Cross team criticized Italians’ failure to properly quarantine themselves and take the national lockdown seriously.

At the U.N. in New York, meanwhile, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the world “is at war with a virus” and warned that “a global recession — perhaps of record dimensions — is a near certainty.”

“If we let the virus spread like wildfire — especially in the most vulnerable regions of the world -- it would kill millions of people,” he said.

The virus appeared to be opening an alarming new front in Africa.

By Associated Press