The John Hopkins University’s real-time ticker showed that the number of COVID-19 positive cases in the US are now at 1,00,717. The number has crossed a lakh, surpassing China’s cases of COVID-19 positive patients. The number includes 1,544 deaths due to the virus.
China, as of on Friday, had more than 81,600 cases infected with the coronavirus.
The biggest cluster of COVID-19 positive cases in the US is in New York. The state of New York is currently facing a drastic shortage of hospital beds, personal protective equipment and ventilators. And if more states and cities face similar shortages, the number of deaths is likely to escalate quickly.
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Thomas Tsai, a professor of health policy at Harvard told AFP: “We’re still seeing a rising number of cases, a rising number of hospitalisations, a rising number of intensive care unit admission, a rising number of patients with the mechanical ventilators.”
US President Donald Trump in the meantime doubted the number of positive cases in China. At a press conference on Friday when he was asked about ‘US cases surpassing China’ he said, “I think it’s a tribute to the testing. We are testing tremendous numbers of people. I’m sure you’re not able to tell what China is testing or not testing, I think that’s a little hard.”
The president, however, got an immediate reply from Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of China’s news outlet Global Times. Xijin in a tweet said, “Don’t you feel embarrassed talking about testing? The US just tested 300,000 people by March 24, while China has tested millions, at least 10 times that of the US or more. Your bragging needs treatment.”
