FILE PHOTO: A medical worker walks past a row of ambulances parked outside Houston Methodist Hospital as storm clouds gather over the Texas Medical Center, amid the global outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) . in Houston, Texas, USA, June 22, 2020. REUTERS / Callaghan O’Hare
(Reuters) – Deaths in the United States from the new coronavirus surpassed 140,000 on Saturday, as cases continued to rise in 42 of 50 states in the past two weeks, according to a Reuters count.
Since the end of June, the United States has seen a resurgence in new cases and now, six weeks later, deaths have also begun to rise, according to a weekly Reuters analysis of state and county data.
The United States is losing around 5,000 people to the virus each week. By contrast, neighboring Canada has reported a total of 8,800 deaths since the pandemic began.
In just one week, the United States records approximately as many deaths as the 5,600 lives that Sweden has lost since the pandemic began earlier this year.
In the hardest hit American counties, officials are running out of places to store bodies as their morgues fill up.
Arizona’s Maricopa County, home to the state’s largest city, Phoenix, is bringing 14 refrigerators to house up to 280 bodies and more than double the morgue capacity ahead of the expected increase in deaths from coronavirus, officials said Thursday.
In Texas, the city of San Antonio and Bexar County have acquired five refrigerated trailers to store up to 180 bodies.
The emergence of such mobile morgues has fueled the feeling in some southern states that the pandemic appears to be out of control.
Written by Lisa Shumaker; Edition of Sonya Hepinstall, Jonathan Oatis and William Mallard
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