As of today, the United States has surpassed China as the country with the most cases of the novel coronavirus. Since the virus began spreading in December, China has held the top spot.
To compare, the United States has a population of just over 330 million residents, while China far exceeds that number having 1.4 billion members. While Italy totaled 80,589 infected, China had 81,782 cases. However, Italy has had over 8000 deaths resulting from the virus, China around 3000, and the US has had a little over 1000.
There are now 82,404 confirmed infections in America, according to John Hopkins University.
New York City has accounted for nearly half of those numbers totaling 37,802 infections in the state. The New York City metro area accounts for 35% of all new cases in the US, Deborah Birx, response coordinator for the White House’s coronavirus task force, said in a briefing Thursday.
Today during a press conference, President Donald Trump contributed the high numbers of positive cases in America to the amount of testing being done across the country.
“It’s a tribute to the amount of testing we’re doing,” Trump said. “We’re doing a tremendous amount of testing.”
Surges in heavily populated areas such as Seattle and New York have called for hospitals to begin storing bodies in refrigerated trucks, and moving patients to outlying facilities, according to the Wall Street Journal.