During last week The United States accumulated more than 500,000 new cases of coronavirus, a record that indicates how fast the virus is spreading, while President Donald Trump, in the final stretch of the electoral campaign, without relying on real data, ensures that the pandemic is ending.
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The figure is the sum of new coronavirus infections in the Johns Hopkins University count, a reference in data on the pandemic.
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The record was broken on Tuesday, just as the Trump administration announced what it called one of its scientific achievements, in a press release that included a reference written in capital letters and in bold type: “ENDING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC.”
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Since the first confirmed infection was registered, on January 21, until reaching the first 500,000 infections on April 11, almost three months passed.
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Now, the spread is faster despite restrictive measures implemented by the states, which later relaxed.
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Last week, the average number of daily infections was 71,000, which represents an increase of 40% compared to the data from two weeks ago.
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Twenty states, including Illinois, have recorded their highest seven-day average of new cases, and three states – Tennessee, Wisconsin and Oklahoma – have set records for daily deaths. On Tuesday, Oklahoma and Wyoming broke the record for deaths in a single day and Kentucky reported a new high of daily cases.
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More than two million new cases of coronavirus were confirmed in the world in the last week, the shortest period for that exponential growth since the start of the pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.
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The good news, according to the WHO, is that despite the large increase in infections, “the proportion of deaths remains relatively low compared to the initial phase of the pandemic.”
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