US COVID-19 Death Toll Overtakes Spain, Becomes Second Highest in World After Italy

As statisticians believe that the US is about to hit the peak of its COVID-19 outbreak, which could come as early as this week, the country reported almost 2,000 deaths on Wednesday, about the same number of vicitims as the day prior.

Cases of the sickness and number of fatalities in the US have rapidly grown in recent days with daily tallies bringing the overall figures to nearly 432,150 cases and 14,820 fatalities, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.

While the center of the coronavirus pandemic long ago shifted from China to Europe, where Italy holds the record of the most fatalities to date – more than 17,600 – the US is not too far behind, and accounts for about a third of all confirmed cases globally, which has reached nearly 1.5 million. Spain, another virus-hit European country, has registered more than 148,200 cases of the illness, with 14,790 deaths, as of Thursday.

While the coronavirus has spread to every US state and territory, New York remains the hardest-hit state, with the number of virus cases nearing a staggering 150,000, with more than 6,200 victims. Veteran doctors and nurses voiced astonishment at the speed with which patients were deteriorating and dying.

A new study shows the US is expected to suffer the most coronavirus deaths, according to the new projection by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine. The US, which has had by far the largest number of coronavirus cases in the world, is unsurprisingly in first place. According to the IHME study, the country is poised to sustain some 81,000 coronavirus deaths by August. In the worst case scenario, the death toll might even surpass the 136,000 mark.

A new report from a government inspector general announced that the nation’s hospitals are dealing with “severe” and “widespread” shortages of needed medical supplies, hampering the ability to test and respond to the coronavirus pandemic adequately and protect medical staff.

The findings by the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services described a dire situation for front-line doctors and medical staff as cases mount in hospitals.

The report provided an accounting of the shortages faced by hospitals nationwide in trying to obtain equipment for staff and patients, including the avenues some hospitals turned to to acquire those items, like online retailers and paint stores. It also detailed the challenges hospitals faced in trying to keep up with testing demands and the inconsistent guidance that caused confusion.

The assessment, the first internal government look at the response, was based on interviews with administrators from more than 300 hospitals across 46 states, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico.

On Saturday, President Donald Trump urged the American public to brace for a difficult week ahead as the coronavirus spreads rapidly across the United States, warning there would be “a lot of death” in the country. He has recently called US efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus “a matter of life and death”.

The White House has projected 100,000 to 240,000 deaths in the United State from the coronavirus pandemic even if current social distancing guidelines are maintained. The projections were presented during a White House briefing on Tuesday. They suggest if no social distancing measures had been put in place across the country between 1.5 million to 2.2 million people would have died.

Margaret Harris, a spokesperson for the World Health Organization (WHO), had stated that the amount of confirmed Covid-19 cases in the United States is growing so rapidly that the country has the potential to become the new epicenter of the pandemic.

Globally, the death toll from coronavirus outbreak has topped 88,500, on Thursday, with more than 1,485,000 people infected worldwide, according to a tally maintained by Johns Hopkins University, while the pandemic rampaging most quickly in the United States and the death toll continuing to rise in Italy, Spain, France, the UK, and Germany