US coronavirus death toll tops 50,000 with another 2,416 killed in 24 hours as number of confirmed cases rises by near-record amount to hit 890,000
An additional 2,416 US coronavirus deaths were confirmed as of Thursday night, bringing the total to 50,442
Confirmed cases rose by 34,828 bringing the total cases across the nation to 891,622, data also shows
That daily death toll was just shy of a peak of 2,524 deaths on April 15; the record rise in cases was on April 10
The U.S. has both the highest number of confirmed cases in the world and the highest death toll
It comes as a new study has claimed coronavirus was spreading silently through US cities including New York,
Chicago, Boston, San Francisco and Seattle in February when the world was worried only about China
The death toll in the United States from the coronavirus topped 50,000 Thursday evening as the number of confirmed cases rose by a near-record amount to hit more than 891,000.
An additional 2,416 deaths were confirmed, bringing the total to 50,442. Confirmed cases rose by 34,828 bringing the total cases across the nation to 891,622.
That daily death toll was just shy of a peak of 2,524 deaths in a single day on April 15.
The record daily rise in coronavirus cases was on April 10 when the number jumped by 35,579.
The U.S. has both the highest number of confirmed cases in the world and the highest death toll.
A predictive model relied on by the White House this week increased its projection of expected deaths by August by 10 per cent to 66,000.
The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation now expects the national death toll to hit 65,976 by August – 5,561 more than previously forecast.
Despite the peak in deaths and confirmed cases, states are still looking at easing lockdowns in a bid to kick start the economy again.
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt said Wednesday the state will begin to reopen Friday with barbershops, hair and nail salons, pet groomers and spas back in business.
Others, including restaurants and movie theaters, can reopen within 10 days, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt said Wednesday.
Oklahoma joins Colorado, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas in restarting their economies.
It comes after President Donald Trump last week gave the nation’s governors his road map for how the US can reopen businesses and schools shut down by the coronavirus.
The guidelines suggest that states should record two weeks of declining cases before reopening. None of the states that are reopening have yet to record such a decline.
Public health experts have warned the US could be headed for a ‘perfect storm’ of new virus infections as the southern states form a coalition to reopen the economy.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis revealed Tuesday that Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi are joining forces to ease lockdown measures across the states, in a move that mirrors the coalition already set out by some northern states.
Jill Roberts of the University of South Florida’s College of Public Health issued a grave warning that together the six states – which are rife with chronic health conditions and are lagging behind on testing – could trigger a new spike in cases and deaths if they push to reopen too soon.
‘If you put these states together, there is a perfect storm for a massive epidemic peak later on,’ she told Politico.
The reopening plans come as a new study has claimed Coronavirus was spreading silently through US cities including New York, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco and Seattle in February when the world was worried only about China.
Researchers from Northwestern University have estimated that based on lockdown orders, confirmed cases and people’s traveling and moving habits, the true number of people infected across those five cities by March 1 was 28,000.
Only 23 cases had been confirmed at the time.
Their estimates were shared by The New York Times on Thursday and paint a worrying picture of how far behind the US was in responding to the threat.
The first death in the US was previously thought to have occurred on February 29 in Washington State and was that of a man who had recently come back from Wuhan.
This week, Californian officials revealed that a seemingly healthy woman died on February 6 from the virus.
Patricia Dowd died at home in Santa Clara County, which takes in San Jose and is just south of San Francisco and the Bay Area, but her death went unreported as a coronavirus death because she was not tested.
According to her relatives, she had been suffering flu like symptoms for a few days before her death but had recovered.
They chalked her death down to a heart attack but were confused by it because she exercised regularly, did not smoke and watched her diet.
In the hardest-hit corner of the U.S., evidence emerged that perhaps 2.7 million New York state residents have been infected by the virus — 10 times the number confirmed by lab tests.
The study took samples from 3,000 randomly selected people across the state who were chosen at grocery stores and had their blood taken via a finger-prick test that the state’s health department made.
It remains unknown how accurate it is. While private companies have given exact percentages for how accurate their own tests are, when questioned about their test, the NY health department, said only that theirs was ‘very accurate’.
Statewide, the virus prevalence was 13.9 percent but it was far higher in New York City, where 21.2 percent tested positive. New York City, which has a population of 8.4million, has recorded 10,290 confirmed coronavirus deaths and there are another 5,121 presumed deaths from the disease.
There are currently more than 141,000 confirmed cases of the virus in the city.
Oxiris Balbot, the New York City health commissioner, said on Thursday that she estimates up to one million New Yorkers might have been infected.
Unemployment in the U.S. is swelling to levels last seen during the Great Depression of the 1930s, with 1 in 6 American workers thrown out of a job by the coronavirus, according to new data released Thursday.
More than 4.4 million laid-off Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, the government reported. In all, roughly 26 million people — the population of the 10 biggest U.S. cities combined — have now filed for jobless aid in five weeks.
