Health and Medicine
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The US crossed the 3 million threshold for Covid-19 cases on July 8, and as of July 9, 3,055,144 people in the United States have the respiratory disease caused by SARS-CoV-2. Of those 3 million, 132,309 have sadly died. Just under 1 million people have recovered although some report debilitating symptoms continuing post-recovery. Currently, we are not sure what the long-term effects of the virus will be.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.The US became the epicenter of the pandemic in March and since then it has continued to lead globally with the highest numbers of cases and deaths in the world. Currently, one-quarter of all global infections are in the US, double the number of cases in Brazil, the country with the next highest figures, and over four times as many cases as India and Russia, currently third and fourth in the world.
These numbers come from the Johns Hopkins University Covid-19 Dashboard, which collates data from multiple sources for the most up-to-date figures. The death figure is now higher than all the US casualties in World War I (63,114 from disease and 53,402 from combat). More people have died because of Covid-19 than the US casualties of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Spanish-American War, the Korean War, 9/11, the War in Iraq, the War in Afghanistan, and the Vietnam War combined (113,808).
The US has also experienced the highest daily increase in cases with over 60,021 new Covid-19 cases reported on July 8 for the previous 24 hours. This has followed on from a week of daily increases of over 40,000 across the country. Last week, Dr Anthony Fauci, a key member of the White House coronavirus task force, stated in a hearing held by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that the US was "going in the wrong direction," and the daily count could “go up to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around," adding, "I am very concerned.”
These worrying figures come after the Trump administration officially notified the United Nations that the US will leave the World Health Organization (WHO). This move places the US in a weaker position in being able to deal with current and future diseases and has been widely condemned by scientists, health organizations, and politicians on both sides of the political aisle. Some experts have suggested that Trump is using the WHO as a scapegoat to shift blame and attention from his administration's mishandling of the pandemic from the beginning.
[H/T: CNBC]
