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New York City alone has more Covid-19 cases than China or UK
The city had reported more than 104,410 confirmed cases, which was way over 85,212 in the United Kingdom and 83,213 in China. The death toll stood at 6,898.
New York City, the epicenter of the American coronavirus epidemic, alone had way more confirmed cases Monday than the whole of China, where the pandemic started last December, the United Kingdom and others, as President Donald Trump said decision on reopening the country to come “shortly”.
The city had reported more than 104,410 confirmed cases, which was way over 85,212 in the United Kingdom and 83,213 in China. The death toll stood at 6,898.
New York state had 190,288 confirmed cases, more than the world’s three worst affected countries after the United States — 169,496 in Spain, 156,262 in Italy and 133,472 in France. The death toll was up to 9,384 in the state.
The number of cases in all of the United States was up to 557,663 and deaths to 22,116 deaths. Despite these rising numbers, public health officials have expressed cautious optimism based on emerging signs of an improvement, such as drop in hospitalization and “flattening” of cases, fatalities.
The Trump administration has been pushing for reopening the country, or parts of it, based on these signs. Trump has said he will be announced a task force to determine the right time for it. But on Monday he signaled he will be deciding that in consultation with state governors.
“A decision by me, in conjunction with the Governors and input from others, will be made shortly!” Trump wrote on twitter.
The president has been raring to reopen the country worried about the impact of the lockdown on his re-election prospects in November, according to news reports. Close to 17 million people have been left jobless by the epidemic, the stock market has ben savaged and economists have warned of a slowdown comparable to the Great Depression of 1929.
Trump is also battling increasing criticism of his administration’s “botched” and “delayed” response to the epidemic. He hit back in a string of tweets Sunday calling these reports “Fake” and cited his February 16 ban on foreign travelers from China as proof.
The American president then went on to re-tweet a post that called for firing Anthony Fauci, the country’s top epidemiologist who earlier Sunday said in a TV interview that earlier mitigation efforts “could have saved lives”, aligning himself with the growing criticism of the president.
“I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives,” Fauci told CNN.
“Obviously, no one is going to deny that. But what goes into those kinds of decisions is complicated. But you’re right. Obviously, if we had, right from the very beginning, shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different. But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down.”
President Trump has been privately unhappy with Fauci and has fretted about him to his aides, according to multiple news accounts. Fauci has publicly disagreed with Trump’s rosy read of the situation and frequent promises of an early end of the crisis. He has also called for caution in the use of the antimalarial Hydroxychloroquine, which has been touted as a “game-changer” by the president.
But publicly, the president has been respectful the epidemiologist and told reporters many times he listens to him, and the other experts on the task force, such as Deborah Birx. But his re-tweet of a post by a former Republican candidate for the House of Representatives — “Time to #FireFauci …” — gave rise to speculation about their relationship once again.
