U.S. coronavirus infections breached the 9 million mark late Friday, increasing by 1 million in just two weeks as the worst-affected nation in the globe braces for a resurgence in the pandemic in the run-up to the U.S. presidential polls.
The forbidding milestone comes just two weeks after the country registered 8 million coronavirus cases, figures gathered by the Johns Hopkins University showed. The latest number is the fastest the U.S. has added 1 million new cases since the pandemic broke out.
The grim data and health forecast show a wave of disease breaking further beyond control in the country even as U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration delivered a public message junking the ongoing miseries.
According to Dr. Ngozi Ezike, chief of the Illinois Department of Public Health, the cases in the U.S. "continue to soar, the hospitalizations continue to increase and fatalities continue to rise," the New York Times quoted him as saying, as over 8,000 new infections were announced statewide Friday.
On average, more than 77,000 infections are being reported daily in the last seven days, twice the level recorded two months earlier. Hospitalizations are reaching records in 21 out of 50 states. The number of deaths is also soaring higher and has hit almost 230,000.
The University of Washington School of Medicine's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation said it's possible that by the middle of January next year, 2,250 Americans will be dying every day from COVID-19 -- three times more compared to the current rate.
Trump responded to the uptick in coronavirus cases with a tweet Friday morning, placing the blame on case numbers on increased testing. "More testing equals more cases," the Guardian quoted him as saying in the tweet. "Deaths way down. Hospitals have great additional capacity! Doing much better than Europe. Therapeutics working!" he added.
The World Health Organization, for its part, said it does not have the jurisdiction to independently investigate epidemics, forcing the UN health agency to depend on nations to approve their lists of suggested health experts and to adhere to agendas crafted by them.
As of Friday, over 45 million total COVID-19 cases have been recorded across the world, including over 1.18 million pandemic-related deaths. India has more than 8 million cases, next only to the U.S.
Meanwhile, scientists warned that conditions are likely to get worse heading into the winter months and predicted that mortality rates could more than double by the middle of January.
