As the world is celebrating Easter weekend amid lockdown due to Coronavirus pandemic, the United States has passed the grim milestone of 20,000 coronavirus deaths on Saturday.
The US is the worst affected country surpassing Italy’s 19,468 fatalities with the highest number of deaths. COVID-19 has now claimed the lives of at least 20,506 people in the country, with at least 5,27,111, positive cases, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
As more than 5.3 lakh of Americans have tested positive for the deadly disease, the tally would be the same after putting together Spain, Italy, France and Germany’s tally. COVID-19 positive cases in Spain are at 163,027. Italy has 152,271 cases. Germany is infected with 125,452 people so far and 93,790 people in France have got affected by the virus. In terms of fatalities, the US and Italy are followed by Spain (16,606), France (13832) and United Kingdom (9,875), the varsity data showed.
New York , the financial capital of the world, has emerged as the epi-center of coronavirus in the world, overtaking Wuhan which was the epi-centre earlier. A city of 8.3 million, which is one of the most densely populated cities in the US, by Saturday night had as many as 8,627 deaths and more than 180,000 people had tested positive for COVID-19.
President Donald Trump has declared a national emergency and all the 50 States have been notified with major disaster declaration. More than 95 per cent of the country’s 330 million population are under stay-at-home order.
More than 50,000 armed forces personnel have been deployed in fight against COVID-19.
After an initial two-week social mitigation measures, that includes social distancing, the measures have been extended till April 30. Initially, members of the White House Task Force on Coronavirus had projected between one and two lakhs deaths. Now, they have dropped the projection to 60,000 deaths, mainly due to the successful implementation of these measures.
“The people of our country have gone through a lot. But we did it the right way. And we look like we’ll be coming in on the very, very low side, really below the lowest, the lowest side of the curve of death,” Trump told Fox News on Saturday night.
Trump asserted that situation was improving in places like New York, where there is a drop in new patients. Responding to a question, he said he wanted the country to open up as soon as possible.
However, he has not taken a decision so far, even as some media reports said that he the President was looking for early May.
“I think it’s going to be the toughest decision that I’ve ever made. I really, hopefully that I ever will have to make. But it’s certainly the toughest decision that I’ve ever made. I hope that I’m going to make the right decision,” Trump said, adding that he will be making a decision reasonably soon.
“We’re setting up a council now of some of the most distinguished leaders in virtually every field including politics and business and medical. We’ll be making that decision fairly soon,” Trump said.
Although global infections stand at 1.75 million, according to an AFP tally of official counts, the real number is thought to be much higher, with many countries only testing the most serious cases.
Many experts and the World Health Organization are cautioning countries against lifting lockdown measures too quickly.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had warned on Friday, that opening the lockdown could lead to a “deadly resurgence” of the novel coronavirus, known as SARS-CoV-2 and there are fears that the worst is yet to come for the world’s poorest.
Meanwhile, as the world celebrates Easter today confined to their homes only, President Donald Trump will be among those following Easter services online. He tweeted that he would log on Sunday morning to watch Robert Jeffress, the leader of a Southern Baptist megachurch in Texas and an ardent supporter of the US leader.
(With inputs from agencies)