Coronavirus: US Overtakes Italy as Country with Most Deaths

The US has suffered more confirmed coronavirus deaths than any other country and on Saturday was poised to soon reach 19,000 Covid-19 fatalities, new data indicated.

By Saturday afternoon, Johns Hopkins University’s tally of US Covid-19 fatalities was at 18,860. Italy followed with 18,849. The US was also the first country to report 2,000 deaths in a single day, with 2,108 people dying in the previous 24 hours.

New York, the hardest-hit US state, saw 783 deaths on Friday, raising the total to 8,627, governor Andrew Cuomo said at a briefing in Albany, the state capital.

“That is not an all-time high, and you can see that the numbers [are] somewhat stabilizing – but it is stabilizing at a horrific rate,” Cuomo said.

The US outbreak, now exceeding a half-million confirmed cases, outpaced Spain, the country with the second-most confirmed cases, by approximately 340,000.

Researchers at John Hopkins have tallied a total of 503,594 confirmed US cases. Spain follows with 161,852. Italy ranks third in confirmed cases, at 147,577. There have been 29,223 reported recoveries in the US, the researchers also said.

Worldwide coronavirus deaths now total 104,937. Confirmed cases have reached 1,724,736. Recorded worldwide recoveries total 354,815.

The US coronavirus crisis is widely recognized to have been exacerbated by slow federal responses and patchwork state-level approaches.

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The White House expert Dr Deborah Birx has said there are positive signs that the outbreak is stabilising, but warned: “We have not reached the peak.”

Dr Anthony Fauci, the top US expert on infectious diseases, recently said the US outbreak will approach its end when new infections number almost zero, with the number of deaths close behind.

“I believe that in a few months, hopefully, that we’ll get it under control enough that it won’t be as frightening as it is now, but it will not be an absent threat,” Fauci told the New York Times.

On MSNBC on Friday, Fauci was asked about the presidential election: “If you had your way, and I know November to a lot of people seems a long time from now, would people in all 50 states have the right and ability to vote by mail?”

Fauci indicated that was not his area of expertise, according to Mediaite, replying: “I would hope that by November we would have things under such control that we could have a real degree of normality. That’s my interest and my job as a public health person.”

Questions about normalcy are especially fueled by the stalled US economy, as coronavirus-related business closures and slowdowns have caused 16 million people to lose their jobs.

Donald Trump has pushed for a reopening of the economy and reportedly hopes to do so by May. But the president has qualified this hope somewhat, saying at Friday’s press briefing: “I want to get it open as soon as possible … I would love to open it. I’m not determined.”

Trump is expected to next week announce a council of medical and business leaders who will assist him with the “biggest decision I’ve ever had to make”: when to reopen America for business amid a global pandemic.

On Saturday Cuomo also addressed questions about reopening the economy in his briefing, and maintained: “This is no time for politics.”

“You start to hear this dialogue on reopening, and you start to hear people with political theories on whether we should open faster, whether we should reopen sooner,” Cuomo said. “That is corrosive and destructive – and if we don’t stop it, it will feed on itself.

“We don’t know if there’s going to be a second wave or not,” he added.

Health experts have warned that prematurely lifting stay-at-home restrictions could prompt a “deadly resurgence” of coronavirus.

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