The US has become the country with most coronavirus fatalities in the world after the death toll exceeded 20,280 people and surpassed Italy’s numbers, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
Italy, which remained atop the grim rankings for weeks, has so far registered 19,468 deaths, with third-placed Spain reporting 16,480 people killed by the virus.
The US has taken the lead after recording around 2,000 lethal cases from Covid-19 on each of the last four days – eventually crossing the single-day milestone on Friday.
The Big Apple has remained the nation’s hardest-hit city, with death toll there reaching 8,627.
However, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was able to find a silver lining in the development of the epidemic in the US most populous city, saying the number of hospitalizations and people being placed in intensive care is continuing to decline.
The mortality rate – the number of deaths per 100 Covid-19 cases and per 100,000 citizens – has been lower in America than in Italy, Spain and some other countries. With a population of over 328 million, the US is home to five times more people than Italy and nearly seven times more than Spain.
Friday’s figures from John Hopkins University indicated that the US was ranked ninth in the world in terms of case-fatality ratio , and seventh when it came to the number of deaths per 100,000 people.
Italy had the worst case-fatality ratio with 12.8 percent, while Spain suffered the most deaths per 100,000 people, with 34.42.
Some 200,000 Americans may die if stay-at-home orders are lifted in the country after 30 days, the Departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and Health and Human Services (HHS) warned on Friday. The model, created by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, projected that even if the restrictions remain in place there will still have been around 61,500 deaths in the US due to Covid-19 by August.
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