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By Sangameswaran S
(Reuters) – The death toll from the spread of the coronavirus in the United States surpassed 200,000 on Tuesday, by far the highest number of any country.
The United States, on a weekly average, is now losing about 800 lives each day to the virus, according to a Reuters tally. That’s down from a peak of 2,806 daily deaths recorded on April 15 (Chart: https://tmsnrt.rs/2ZH76z6)
During the first months of the pandemic, 200,000 deaths were considered by many to be the maximum number of lives that would likely be lost in the United States to the virus.
“The idea of 200,000 deaths is really very sobering and in some ways impressive,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, America’s leading infectious disease expert, told CNN.
Fauci said it was not inevitable that the United States would slide into another desperate situation with the increase in coronavirus cases during cold weather months, but that he was concerned about parts of the country where public health measures were not being implemented.
On Monday, US President Donald Trump said he had done a phenomenal job in the pandemic that has infected nearly 6.9 million Americans.
“It affects practically no one. It’s an amazing thing,” Trump told supporters at a campaign rally in Swanton, Ohio, on Monday night. “It affects … older people with heart problems and other problems; if they have other problems, that’s what it really affects, that’s it.”
Trump admitted to downplaying the danger of the coronavirus early on because he didn’t want to “create a panic.”
With just six weeks to go to the Nov. 3 election, Trump is behind his Democratic rival Joe Biden nationally in all major opinion polls and is shoulder to shoulder in key states. Trump’s handling of the pandemic and subsequent economic recession has hit his position among many voters.
Trump has frequently questioned the advice of scientific experts on everything from the timing of a vaccine to reopening schools and businesses to wearing a mask. He has refused to support a national mask mandate and has held large political demonstrations where few wore masks.
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Robert Redfield, recently told Congress that a mask would provide more guaranteed protection than a vaccine, which would only be widely available at “end of second quarter, third quarter of 2021”.
Trump disputed the vaccine schedule, saying it could be available in a matter of weeks and before the Nov.3 election.
Biden, who often wears a mask and has said he would need masks across the country, cautioned against a hasty launch of a vaccine, saying, “Let me be clear: I trust vaccines, I trust scientists, but I don’t trust Donald. Trump.. “
The University of Washington Institute of Health predicts coronavirus deaths to reach 378,000 by the end of 2020, and the daily death toll skyrocketed to 3,000 a day in December.
More than 70% of the people in the United States who lost their lives to the virus were over the age of 65, according to data from the CDC https://bit.ly/32C1doQ.
The southern states of Texas and Florida contributed the most deaths in the United States in the past two weeks and were closely followed by California. (Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/33MNdYD)
California, Texas, and Florida, the three most populous states in the US, have recorded the most coronavirus infections and have long surpassed New York state, which was the epicenter of the outbreak in early 2020. country as a whole reports more than 42,000 new ones. infections on average each day and cases last week increased weekly after falling for eight weeks in a row.
Deaths jumped 5% last week after falling for four weeks in a row, according to a Reuters analysis.
Six out of 10,000 US residents have died from the virus, according to Reuters data, one of the highest rates among developed nations.
Brazil follows the United States in the total number of deaths due to the virus, with more than 137,000 deaths. India has had the highest daily death rate in the world for the past week, with a total of deaths approaching 100,000.
(Reporting by Sangameswaran S in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey and Doina Chiacu in Washington; Edited by Lisa Shumaker and Rosalba O’Brien)
