US Tops Grim Coronavirus Milestone: 1,000 Cases
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – More than 1,000 people in the US have been diagnosed with the novel coronavirus, according to an unofficial count compiled by researchers at Johns Hopkins University.
The 1000th case was reported on Tuesday night, as state and local officials in California and New York began enacting aggressive new measures to contain and mitigate the spread of the virus. The numbers have risen rapidly since health authorities announced the first community-spread case in California on Feb. 26.
Hopkins compiled the numbers using data from local and national health departments including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has lagged the Hopkins count, and from local news reports of confirmed cases. The count has risen in part because hospitals, labs and other public health facilities finally now have access to more testing kits after weeks of confusion and delay. Public health experts believe the ongoing testing problems mean that unknown numbers of cases have gone undetected.
At least 28 people have died from the disease in the United States, according to the Hopkins database, though public health officials expect that toll to rise.
Most of the reported deaths so far have taken place in Washington State, where a nursing home and retirement complex near Seattle suffered a lethal outbreak of the virus. Washington's King County announced the discovery of 75 new confirmed cases on Tuesday, bringing the total number in the county to nearly 200.
Also on Tuesday, Massachusetts declared a state of emergency as officials there announced that the number of confirmed cases in the state had leaped to 92, most of them linked to a biotech firm's strategy meeting in Boston.
Although public health officials have warned consistently that the number of cases would inevitably rise, President Donald Trump and several of his top aides have repeatedly sought to downplay the threat posed by the virus, which originated in Wuhan, China.
During a news conference in February, when the number of US cases stood at just 15, Trump predicted the tally would drop to zero "within a couple of days."
Since then, his remarks have suggested he is monitoring the rising caseload closely. During a visit to CDC headquarters in Atlanta last week, the president said that he preferred that a cruise ship off the California coast that housed infected individuals not be allowed to return to land, Politico reported.
"I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault,” Trump said. The ship was allowed to dock in Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday.
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, stressed during a White House briefing on Tuesday that the rising number of cases was expected and that it would certainly continue to grow by the following morning.
The number of cases has continued to mount in Europe, Fauci noted, though he said it appeared that the epidemic's growth rate was slowing in China.
"If you look at the curves of outbreaks, they go big peaks and come down. What we need to do is flatten that down. ... You do that by trying to interfere with the natural flow of the outbreak," Fauci said. "We would like the country to realize that as a nation we can't be doing the kinds of things we were doing a few months ago."