The eerie emptiness of cities responding to coronavirus, in photos

The Kaaba, inside Mecca’s Grand Mosque, was emptied by Saudi Arabia on March 5, 2020, over fears of the new coronavirus, an unprecedented move after the country suspended the year-round umrah pilgrimage. | Abdel Ghani Bashir /AFP via Getty Images

Normally packed streets, museums, and venues around the world have fallen silent amid the deadly outbreak.

The Covid-19 coronavirus disease has now spread to 84 countries, infected at least 100,000 people, and killed more than 3,400.

World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is instructing countries to “to pull out all the stops” to mobilize their response. He and other officials are urging a focus on protecting the highest-risk groups: older people, people with preexisting health conditions, and health care workers.

This requires a coordinated, society-wide effort to spread the word about measures like hand-washing, avoiding large gatherings in areas where the virus is transmitting, seeking care if you have Covid-19 symptoms, and isolating the sick.

The emergency has forced governments to shut down schools, organizers to cancel conferences, and the ordinarily teeming metropolis of Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the outbreak, to fall eerily silent. The social and economic costs of the outbreak have been immense and will only grow larger.

Here are scenes from the response to the outbreak around the world: