More than 900 people have died in the US in 24 hours with the death toll increasing to more than 4,300 as the number of coronavirus cases in the US surpassed 200,000.
New deaths from the coronavirus rose by 908 today while new infections across the country increased by 25,676.
The US death toll has now surpassed the number of deaths reported in China (3,309) where the outbreak first emerged back in December.
The death toll in Italy (12,428) and Spain (9,053) is still higher than the United States.
More than 40 percent of the country’s fatal cases come from New York state where the death toll rose by 391 to 1,941.
New York state also saw an increase of 7,917 cases to bring the total number of new infections to 83,712.
Michigan now has the third highest death toll in the country after reporting a spike in its figures over night.
The state recorded 75 news deaths, bringing its death toll to 259. Michigan has more than 7,600 confirmed cases.
New Jersey is second behind New York with 267 deaths and 18,997 infections.
President Trump has warned Americans to brace for a ‘hell of a bad two weeks’ ahead as the White House projected there could be 100,000 to 240,000 deaths in the US even if current social distancing guidelines are maintained.
Trump called it ‘a matter of life and death’ for Americans to heed his administration’s guidelines and predicted the country would soon see a ‘light at the end of the tunnel’.
‘I want every American to be prepared for the hard days that lie ahead,’ Trump said. ‘This is going to be one of the roughest two or three weeks we’ve ever had in our country… We’re going to lose thousands of people.’
The jaw-dropping projections were laid out as officials described a death toll that in a best-case scenario would likely be greater than the more than 53,000 American lives lost during World War I.
The model’s high end neared the realm of possibility that Americans lost to the virus could approach the 291,000 Americans killed on the battlefield during World War II.
Dr Tony Fauci, the country’s leading virus expert, called the numbers ‘sobering’ and urged Americans to ‘step on the accelerator’ with their collective mitigation efforts.
Trump’s comments came after he announced on Sunday that he was extending to April 30 the social distancing guidelines that advise Americans to cease large gatherings, work from home, suspend onsite learning at schools and more in a nationwide effort to stem the spread of the virus.
It was an abrupt reversal for Trump who spent much of last week targeting April 12 as the day he wanted to see Americans ‘pack the pews’ for Easter Sunday services.
Trump’s latest tonal and tactical shift was driven by several factors, both personal and political.
Trump learned that his close friend, 78-year-old New York real estate mogul Stan Chera, had contracted COVID-19 and fallen into a coma at NewYork-Presbyterian.
“Boy, did that hit home. Stan is like one of his best friends,” said prominent New York Trump donor Bill White.
Trump also grew concerned as the virus spread to Trump country.
“The polling sucked. The campaign panicked about the numbers in red states. They don’t expect to win states that are getting blown to pieces with coronavirus,” a former West Wing official told Variety.
From the beginning of the crisis, Trump had struggled to see it as anything other than a political problem, subject to his usual arsenal of tweets and attacks and bombast.
But he ultimately realized that as bad as the stock market was, getting coronavirus wrong would end his presidency
Fears that the US is on track to become the new Italy, whose healthcare system has buckled under the weight of the pandemic, are fast becoming a reality.
Meanwhile, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, whose CNN host brother Chris tested positive on Tuesday, gave a stern warning to other states that think they won’t be as badly affected by the coronavirus.
Cuomo said the ‘apex’ – when the most will die and become infected – has still not hit New York state and that it will come at the end of April.
He urged other states to pay attention to what is happening in New York and start planning ahead, saying: ‘This is not just a New York problem.
‘People watch their nightly news in Kansas and say, “it’s a New York problem.” Well it’s not.
‘It’s a New York problem today. Tomorrow, it’s a Kansas problem, a Texas problem, a New Mexico problem. Look at us today, see yourself tomorrow.’