From around 2% of all global cases on March 1, United States, Italy, Germany and Spain together now have more than 50% of the world’s Covid-19 cases — a surge that demonstrates how the pandemic has shifted from being battle fought largely in China to one that is now heavily centred in the West.
The rising cases in these four countries -- the US is now the most infected nation in the world and Italy the one with the most deaths -- are preventing a “flattening of the curve”, which has been a global goal for several weeks to curtail the spread of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19).
The spread across the United States, the new epicentre of the disease, is far more uniform than it was in China, where nearly 68,000 of the total 81,800 cases were reported in the Hubei province where the disease is said to have originated. As of Friday night, 86,548 people across the US were infected, and New York alone reported 38,977 cases.
On Friday, the US surpassed Italy and China in number of Covid-19 infections with a large jump in New York state that now has 50% of the country’s patients and faces a health care catastrophe with hospitals projected to run out of capacity soon.