By Iftikhar Ali in New York and Huma Nisar in Washington D.C.
The grim milestone means the United States has lost more people to the novel coronavirus than the combined casualties of conflicts since the 1950s Korean war and the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
According to Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Research Center, there have been 100, 271 deaths in the United States by Wednesday evening. Globally, the world has lost 354, 944 people to COVID-19 disease caused by the virus that was reported from China’s Wuhan city.
Worldwide, there have been more than 5.6 million confirmed cases of COVID-19. The U.S. alone has reported more than 1.6 million confirmed cases.
In the United States, while the virus caught many unawares more than three months ago in Washington state and New York, it continued to spread to several areas.
It’s only in recent weeks that COVID-19 cases have subsided in New York, which has lost more than 30,000 people after April, so far the cruelest month of the crisis. The virus has also killed healthcare workers including doctors, nurses and first responders. In New York, the United Nations joined in paying tributes to the halthcare workers, publishing pictures on its website like the featured image that shows the Empire State Building.
The outbreak of the disease has caused unprecedented number of people living in lock down and observing restrictions like maintaining social distances and wearing face masks at public places.
Initially, the White House estimates said the U.S. could lose up to 240,000 people to the highly infectious disease but later revised the estimates downward as restrictions seemed to work.
Many countries have opened some areas of economy as the initial wave of the pandemic seems to be fading.
But the World Health Organization has warned of a second peak.
Meanwhile, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and member of the White House COVID-19 task force, has staving off the second wave of the disease is possible.
“It’s in our hands. We can prevent a second wave if we respond to the inevitable infections we’ll see in the fall and winter,” he told Newsweek.
“There’s no doubt that this virus is not going to disappear from the planet by the time we get to the fall and the winter, because there’s considerable activity right now in the United States, even though some cities and states are going down [in virus cases] from looking at the charts,” Fauci added.
At the same time Fauci words of caution.
“I don’t think there’s a chance in the world that we’re going avoid more infections…inevitably there will be infections in the fall and winter.”
“I mean, China is seeing that now. They practically completely suppressed the virus but now travel-related cases are coming back into China.”
