US Coronavirus Deaths Pass 20,000, Hospitalizations Declining

Total US coronavirus deaths reached 20,000 on Saturday, according to figures from John Hopkins University. The latest casualty counts place the United States in first place in terms of casualties by country, surpassing those of Italy.

The 2,074 Americans that died of the novel disease on Friday is the most in any single day since the beginning of the pandemic in the country. Dr. Chris Murray of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington is predicting that the death totals of Friday and Saturday will end up at the apex of daily deaths in the country, suggesting that daily deaths will slowly decrease from the large figure. Murray is also predicting that roughly 61,000 Americans will die of the Chinese coronavirus by August, basing his estimate on a model that is updated with coronavirus data on a daily basis.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo described a slight decrease in daily deaths from Wednesday to Friday, declining from 799 to 783 respectively. On a more positive note, he’s described the daily number of hospitalizations occurring in the state’s medical system due to the disease as declining, suggesting that New York is indeed ‘flattening the curve.’ City workers were seen burying bodies in mass graves at Hart Island, a facility that has long been used to bury unclaimed bodies.

“The number of hospitalizations appears to have hit an apex, and the apex appears to be a plateau,” said Cuomo of daily hospitalizations. “Still people getting infected, still people going into the hospital, but again, a lower rate of increase.”

The United States is far from out of the woods, but a nuanced look at the data suggests that the very worst of the damage the virus is inflicting is passing.