U.S. Death Toll Tops 40,000 As Officials Struggle To Pinpoint Fatality Rates
In the United States, the COVID-19 fatality rate has steadily ticked upward, from about 1.35 percent in late March to nearly 5 percent after New York City added in "probable" deaths. However, those rates aren't necessarily representative of reality as testing failures undermine efforts to count mild and asymptomatic cases.
As of Sunday, nearly three months since the first confirmed case of the coronavirus was reported in the United States, there are over 746,300 confirmed cases of the virus in the country, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Cases of COVID-19 have been reported in at least 212 countries and territories, according to the World Health Organization. And according to the Johns Hopkins data, over 2,382,000 people have been infected globally. (Hagemann, 4/19)
The United States' coronavirus death toll topped 40,000 on Sunday afternoon, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The 40,461 deaths are among more than 755,533 coronavirus cases, the university's Covid-19 tracker says. The grim milestone was reached as Harvard researchers warned that if the country wants the economy to open back up -- and stay that way -- testing must go up to at least 500,000 people per day. (Holcombe and McLaughlin, 4/19)
Globally, the virus has infected more than 2.3 million people, as governments in many countries including the U.S. have ordered some non-essential businesses to close and residents to stay at home unless absolutely necessary.(Bowden, 4/19)
With government officials debating how and when to reopen the economy, a fundamental question about the coronavirus pandemic remains unanswered: Just how deadly is this disease? The case fatality rate of covid-19 varies wildly from country to country and even within nations from week to week. In Germany, fewer than 3 in 100 people with confirmed infections have died. In Italy, the rate is almost five times higher, according to official figures. (Mooney, Eilperin and Achenbach, 4/17)
Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, deaths have been the statistic that has seemed the most immutable. Other numbers, particularly infection rates, are subject to a variety of factors: lag in results being reported, limits to the availability of testing and the question of whether symptoms ever get bad enough to prompt a test at all. All those caveats mean the 23,928 cases identified in the state as of Sunday represent an undercount, possibly a dramatically lower figure than the true infection rate. (Adelson and Russell, 4/18)
