US Surges Over 100 Coronavirus Deaths, Nearly Doubles Previous Single-Day High for New Cases
New statistics show that the coronavirus is beginning to take hold across America as the nation passed the 100-death mark as of Wednesday.
Although numbers vary slightly depending upon timing and sources, the statistics used on Worldometers.info show that the number of total cases in the U.S. grew by 1,748 on Tuesday.
Monday’s 983 new cases had been the previous single day’s high, as had Sunday’s 737 new cases. Deaths in the U.S. now total 106, according to the site.
The Johns Hopkins University databoard showed slightly different numbers, with 115 deaths and 6,519 total confirmed cases.
In New York state, which has been among the hardest hit by the virus, Health Commissioner Howard Zucker said Tuesday the increase in cases will peak in about 45 days, or near May 1, according to the New York Post.
New York City Mayor Bill deBlasio said that he is considering imposing a city-wide shelter-in-place order that would only allow residents to leave their homes for food, medicine and other essential trips.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, however, opposes such a step.
“People will panic at the thought of being quarantined,” Cuomo said at a news briefing Tuesday.
However, officials are urging voluntary compliance with requests to avoid crowds.
“Stay at home as much as possible, limit the spread,” Surgeon General Jerome Adams said Tuesday, according to CBS News. “We do not want to look like Italy does two weeks from now.”
More than 2,500 people have died in Italy as a result of the virus. Although Italy tried to impose a national lockdown to halt the spread of the disease, the action came after the virus had already spread widely throughout the country.
During a media briefing Tuesday, President Donald Trump urged Americans to focus on compliance for the next two weeks.
“Our guidance yesterday urges Americans to take action for 15 days to help stem the outbreak,” Trump said, according to White House media pool report.
“So it’s a 15-day period. I guess, now I would say it’s a 14-day period. It was 15 days from yesterday, and we’re asking everyone to work at home, if possible, postpone unnecessary travel, and limit social gatherings to no more than 10 people.”
“By making shared sacrifices and temporary changes, we can protect the health of our people and we can protect our economy, because I think our economy will come back very rapidly,” he added.
“So it’s 15 days from yesterday. We’ll see what happens after that. If we do this right, our country — and the world, frankly — but our country can be rolling again pretty quickly. Pretty quickly. We have to fight that invisible enemy that, I guess, [was] unknown but we’re getting to know it a lot better,” he said.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the strategy being employed is “kind of like a race against the virus.”
Fauci said the rise in cases does not mean that the administration’s strategy is not working.
“Now, you could see the virus going up and up, and your effect, your work — what you’re trying to do — may actually be having an effect, but you may not see it because it’ll still be going up,” he said.
“And as you’re trying to implement your interference with the virus, you may not realize that you are actually interfering, and you’ll say, ‘Wait a minute, it’s still going up. What’s going on? You’ve done nothing.’ But you don’t know whether it would do this versus that.”
“It probably would be several weeks and maybe longer before we know whether we’re having an effect,” Fauci added. “It may be, at the end of the day, we’ll see a curve that would have been way, way up. But I wouldn’t, like, put us to task every few days: ‘Well, wait a minute, it’s going up. Is it working or not?’ That would be really misleading if we do that.”
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