US Coronavirus Deaths Top 1,000, Total Cases Will Soon Surpass Italy and China
More than 1,000 people in the United States have now died from the coronavirus, as America moves toward becoming the country with the most virus cases in the world.
The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center also showed that the world is closing in on half a million cases since the disease was first tracked in China.
According to the data, the U.S. has now suffered 1,046 deaths, with at least 280 of them coming in New York City alone, as of Thursday morning.
Washington state is second with 133 deaths, followed by New Jersey with 44 deaths.
New York state is far and away America’s leader in virus cases, with 33,033 confirmed cases, followed by New Jersey at 4,407 and California at 3,169, as of Thursday.
Within New York state, 20,011 cases have come from New York City, with 4,691 in the upscale downstate New York county of Westchester. Two Long Island counties — Nassau and Suffolk — have also been hard hit, with 3,285 cases in Nassau County and 2,260 cases in Suffolk County.
The U.S. has been adding between 10,000 and 12,000 news confirmed cases per day, meaning that its current ranking of third in the world is likely to change, probably as soon as Friday.
The nations ahead of the U.S., which has 69,210 confirmed cases, include China, with 81,782 cases, and Italy, with 74,386 cases.
China has been averaging an increase of less than 1,000 new confirmed cases per day while Italy’s confirmed caseload rises at the rate of about 5,000 new cases a day.
China, where the virus began, currently leads all nations with 74,181 people who have recovered form the virus. U.S. data shows 619 are reported as having recovered.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that the number of new cases in the U.S. will determine how the government responds.
Fauci has said even before this week’s spike that such an increase was to be expected.
“You’ve got to be realistic,” he told CNN on Wednesday.
“And you’ve got to understand that you don’t make the timeline, the virus makes the timeline. So you’ve got to respond, in what you see happen. And if you keep seeing this acceleration, it doesn’t matter what you say. One week, two weeks, three weeks — you’ve got to go with what the situation on the ground is.”
Fauci also cautioned that in looking at restoring America to pre-virus footing, there may be a new normal in store.
“We really need to be prepared for another cycle,” Fauci told reporters at a news briefing.
President Donald Trump said Wednesday at the news conference that lifting restrictions is likely to happen on a piecemeal basis, according to a White House media pool report.
“America continues to gain ground in the war against the virus,” Trump said. “I want to thank the American people for answering the call, following our guidelines and making the sacrifices required to overcome this terrible threat.
“More aggressively we commit to social distancing — so important. Social distancing — such an important phrase. And we do it right now. The more lives we can save and the sooner we can eventually get people back to work, back to school and back to normal.”
“And there are large sections of our country — probably can go back much sooner than other sections. And we’re obviously looking at that also. People are asking, ‘Is that an alternative?’ And I say, ‘Absolutely, it is an alternative,'” Trump said.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said numbers should not become a source of fear.
“I know that it has become a place where people are looking at numbers rather than what is needed,” she said. “Because if you do these projections, when you got to those projections that said — like in Germany and others, that implied that 60 percent or 50 percent of the population would get infected — the — I want to be very clear, the only way that happens is if this virus remains continuously moving through populations in this cycle, in the fall cycle, and another cycle.
“So that’s through three cycles with nothing being done,” she added.
“And so we’re dealing with Cycle A right now, not the one that could come in the fall of 2020 — although we’re getting prepared for it by the innovations that are being worked on — and not the 2021,” Birx said.
“We’re really dealing with the here and now, while we’re planning for the future. And I think the numbers that have been put out there are actually very frightening to people,” she added, saying the estimates of that scale assume “you have zero controls and you do nothing.”
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