The coronavirus death toll in the US has started to climb again as the recent surge in cases in the sunbelt states feeds through into fatalities.

At least 867 people died of Covid-19 on Thursday in the US and the crucial seven-day average has begun to climb after falling steadily since mid-April, when deaths first peaked at more than 2,000 a day.

For several weeks President Donald Trump has been blaming the country's surging case numbers on the availability of more tests and has suggested that test capacity should be cut to reverse the trend.

However, intensive care wards have been filling up across the sunbelt states from Florida to California and now, as had been predicted by experts, deaths have started to climb again. The trend bodes ill not just for those caught up in the outbreak, the bulk of whom are from poor and Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities, but for the president himself - who is hoping to be elected for a second term in November.

In terms of recorded cases, the US has become the worst-affected country, with more than 3.1 million diagnosed Covid-19 cases and at least 133,291 deaths since the crisis started in January.

The US Centres for Disease Control (CDC) predicts the nation's coronavirus death toll will rise to between 140,000 to 160,000 deaths by August.

The trend is predicted to continue unless social distancing can be effectively reinstituted across the south and mid-west of the country.

"As predicted, a month from the case surge started, we are moving to a higher death rate in the US," tweeted Dr Eric Topol, a Professor of Molecular Medicine at the Scripps Research Institute in California.

"I think the shift to younger patients and better treatments will lead to a flatter slope compared with April. But thwarting the surge could have prevented this altogether."

The rise in deaths comes as the leading public health expert in the US, Dr Anthony Fauci, said he had not briefed the president for two months, and he last saw him in person on June 2. In an interview with the 'Financial Times', Dr Fauci said he was "sure" the information shared at his meetings with the vice-president's coronavirus task force was being passed to Mr Trump.

Discussing rising case numbers, he said: "What worries me is the slope of the curve. It still looks like it's exponential."

Meanwhile, France yesterday became the sixth country to report a total coronavirus death toll of more than 30,000, with the number of new confirmed cases above 600 for the third day in a row.

The health ministry said in a statement that 25 people had died from coronavirus infection in the past 24 hours, boosting the cumulative total since early March to 30,004.

Yesterday's increase compares with an average increase of 15 in the previous seven days. In June, France counted on average 34 new deaths per day, in May 143 and in April 695. The number of people in hospital with Covid-19 fell by 115 to 7,062, continuing a weeks-long downtrend, and the number of people in intensive care units fell by 16 to 496, the first time the ICU count had fallen below 500 since mid-March.

The number of confirmed coronavirus infections rose by 658 to 170,752, the third day in a row with more than 600 new infections, compared with an average of 495 over the past 30 days and 527 over the past seven days.

The Czech Republic reported 82 new cases of the novel coronavirus by late afternoon yesterday, bringing its total since the start of the pandemic above 13,000, after a recent uptick in infections caused by local outbreaks.

The country of 10.7 million has reported 352 deaths from Covid-19, far fewer than its Western European neighbours. It was one of the first European countries to impose drastic lockdown measures in March, but has lifted many restrictions since May.

Since June 18, it has reported at least 100 new cases a day 14 times, most recently on Thursday when the total was 105. The largest spike came on June 28, when 305 new cases were reported.

Irish Independent

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US death toll on the rise again as cases surge in the sunbelt states - Independent.ie