Via The Guardian: Focus turns to US as coronavirus continues to spread around world. Excerpt:
The focus of the coronavirus crisis has switched decisively from continental Europe to the US, with the country reporting the highest daily death toll of any nation so far.
The number of Americans killed by Covid-19 was 1,169 on Thursday, while the US’s total of 245,000 confirmed cases is also by far the highest recorded by any country worldwide.
The pandemic continues to spread rapidly around the globe, infecting more than 1 million people and killing nearly 55,000.
Italy has suffered the most deaths with a tally of 14,681, followed by Spain with 10,935, but the toll in the US – which now accounts for about a quarter of the world’s known infections – is rising fast and has topped 6,000.
Hospitals and morgues in New York struggled to treat or bury casualties as the state governor, Andrew Cuomo, predicted similar misery for the rest of the country. New York suffered its deadliest single day on Friday, with 562 additional deaths across the state for a total of 2,935, Cuomo said, with 102,863 confirmed cases.
He warned that people were going to die in the near term due to a lack of ventilators, adding that he would use his authority to take ventilators and protective gear from private hospitals and companies that are not using them.
“If they want to sue me for borrowing their excess ventilators to save lives, let them sue me,” Cuomo said.
Staff at one Brooklyn medical centre were seen disposing of their protective gear in a street refuse bin after loading bodies into refrigerated trucks. Officials have said between 100,000 and 240,000 Americans could ultimately die from the virus. The US disaster response agency, Fema, has asked the US military for 100,000 body bags.
About 90% of Americans are under some kind of stay-at-home order as the country tries to slow the spread by enforcing physical distancing guidelines, although a handful of governors are still resisting issuing statewide confinement orders.
Donald Trump sparked fresh alarm when his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, said the president became concerned about a shortage of vital medical equipment after hearing about it from “friends of his in New York”, suggesting he was responding to anecdotes rather than the state governor or public health officials.
