Fears As America Becomes Number One Country To Record 1,000 Coronavirus Deaths In A Day
The US was the first country to report 1,000 coronavirus deaths in a single day on Wednesday as the death toll soared past 5,000.
With more than 216,000 infections across the country, America is now worse affected by COVID-19 than any other country in the world has been.
The virus shows no signs of slowing down, despite the entire nation is on lockdown, and experts say as many as 200,000 will die by the time the pandemic is over.
There are fears that the next epicenter will be the city of Detroit, after the death toll in Michigan doubled in just three days – a sign of exponential growth which scientists use as an indicator of spikes.
The US death toll is now dwarfing the number of deaths officially reported in China (3,309), where the outbreak first originated back in December.
While the death toll in Italy (13,155) and Spain (9,387) is still higher, the US eclipsed the hard-hit European nations’ confirmed cases, with both Italy (110,574) and Spain (104,118) reporting only around half the number of infections.
Italy’s deadliest day was on March 26th, when 969 new deaths were reported. China’s figures are less clear.
Contemporaneous reports indicate that its deadliest day was in February when 242 died in Hubei province alone. There is growing skepticism over the country’s reported deaths and infections, with some saying the government is hiding the true number.
Michigan now has the third-highest death toll in the US after reporting a spike in its figures in the last couple of days.
The state’s death toll had reached 337 on Wednesday night – an increase of 78 – with more than 9,300 confirmed cases. Last week, its death toll increase was around 4.3
New Jersey is second behind New York with 355 deaths and 22,255 infections. New York continues to bear the brunt, with 84,025 infections and 2,219 deaths.
New York City rushed to bring in more medical professionals and ambulances and parked refrigerated morgue trucks on the streets to collect the dead.
Boroughs outside of Manhattan have been hardest hit, according to a New York City Health Department map which breaks down the city’s coronavirus cases by zip code up until March 31.
The map revealed that the city’s poorer neighborhoods are being hardest hit by the pandemic, while rich New Yorkers in the likes of Greenwich Village and Brooklyn Heights are not being infected to the same level.
Elmhurst and Kew Gardens Hills in Queens, the South Bronx, and East New York in Brooklyn have the most cases of the areas across the city.
In Rockaway, Queens, 436 have tested positive among the community that lives in public housing in Far Rockaway but at the far end of the island, residents in their $1million Belle Harbor homes only have 143 cases.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio drafted in some support Wednesday, appointing controversial former NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill as the city’s COVID-19 Senio Advisor.
