Thursday, 19th September 2024

US now has most Covid deaths, overtaking Italy

Sunday, 12th April 2020

There was a shocking record for the US on Saturday, due to the coronavirus pandemic continued to hurt the country, urging authorities to start drilling up tubes for mass deaths.

Now the US is overtaking Italy, with at least 19,833 deaths reported from the COVID-19 outbreak, the US has now become the most affected country in terms of fatalities.

America is now the worst-hit nation in terms of COVID-19 cases. It is the only country to have reached more than 500,000 infections. New York is the hotspot of the American state, having recorded nearly 9,000 deaths and over 172,000 infections.

Beginning in the day, the US also became the first country to report more than 2,000 deaths from the coronavirus disease in a day. By Saturday, the global death toll had gone past 106,000, while the number of cases worldwide stood at 1.73 million.

Despite the increasing number of cases and deaths, US officials declare there are signs of an improvement in the situation, especially in the areas with a high rate of cases. New York state has seen a decline in cases of hospitalisation. New Jersey and Connecticut have slightly stabilised, and although cities such as Boston and Chicago remain to report cases, the rate of increase has stabilised.

The officials said the crisis has not yet reached the top. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House task force for the coronavirus outbreak, added, “As encouraging as they are, we have not reached the peak.” April 16 is widely believed to be the projected peak day in the US.

Trump is in a hurry to reopen the country as the economy continues to take a hammering due to shutdowns. Asked if he is decided to remove the restrictions by May 1 as he had vowed earlier, he said, “I would love to open it. I’m not determined anything. The facts are going to determine what I do.”

A study examining air samples from hospital wards with COVID-19 patients has found the virus can travel up to 13 feet, twice the current distance guidelines say people should leave between themselves in public.

The provisional results of the investigation by Chinese researchers were published on Friday in Emerging Infectious Diseases, a journal of the US CDC.