USA Number One

On Thursday, the United States went flying past every other nation’s count, to  claim the title of the most coronavirus cases in the world. As of this morning, the United States has upwards of 94,000 cases, while China currently stands at just past of 86,000 — despite the fact that China has four times the population than the US.

The number of deaths is still comparatively low in the US at around 1,400 (Italy, by comparison, is at a staggering 8,200 deaths so far).

It’s a grim reality — an entire country of 330 million people has come to a standstill with people self-isolating at home to keep themselves and the people around them safe.

Testing, Testing

And the trend is very likely to continue as the US has been extremely slow in testing new patients. South Korea alone has tested more than six times the number of patients, as NPR reports.

Countless patients have been turned away because they simply didn’t meet the prerequisite symptoms — or because hospitals simply didn’t have any tests available. Others were denied any treatment because they didn’t have health insurance.

Bleak Outlook

The US economy is in shambles right now. The news comes after almost 3.3 million Americans filed for unemployment claims last week — the highest number in recorded history. The next highest weekly number of claims was in October 1982 with just 695,000.

But competent leadership is hard to come by right now with Trump in office. While the number of cases and deaths are soaring in the country, president Trump announced on Tuesday that he would like to have the country “opened up and just raring to go by Easter,” as CNN reported, despite the fact that doing so could have disastrous consequences, according to experts.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misstated the number of American deaths due to COVID-19; the number is 1,400, not 3,200 — that’s China’s current count. The article has been updated to reflect the accurate number.

READ MORE: U.S. Surpasses China In Cases Of Coronavirus [NPR]

More on the virus: Bill Gates Is Pissed: “We Should’ve Done More” to Stop COVID-19

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The US Now Has the Most Coronavirus Cases in the World