US sees more deaths than in Vietnam War

Official toll tops 58,000 but experts say real figure could be much higher

Over 1 million people in the United States have been infected with COVID-19, with the total death toll exceeding 58,000. But health experts said cases in the country could still rise in the coming weeks, and the true number of infections is believed to be “much higher”.

The country’s COVID-19 cases reached 1,012,583 early on Wednesday, with a total of 58,355 deaths, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

And the deaths toll has now surpassed the total number of US troop fatalities in the Vietnam War (1955-75). A total of 58,220 US servicemen died in the war.

Referring to the number of US infections, The New York Times on Tuesday said: “The 1 million figure does not include thousands of Americans who contracted the virus but were not tested, either because they did not show symptoms or because of a persistent national testing shortage.

“Some disease researchers have estimated that the true number of infections may be somewhere around 10 times the known number, and preliminary testing of how many people have antibodies to the virus seems to support that view,” the report said.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Monday that nearly one-quarter of New York City residents tested positive for coronavirus antibodies, suggesting that COVID-19 spread farther than previously believed.

A sample of 7,500 people were tested for COVID-19 antibodies and the results suggested 24.7 percent of New York City residents and 14.9 percent of state residents had been infected with the virus, Cuomo said.

Fifty-one percent of New Yorkers know someone who has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, and 32 percent know someone who died as a result of the virus, according to a Siena College poll.

The number of deaths is also thought to be higher as state public health officials warned shortages of trained workers and materials has limited testing capacity.

To many, the staggering numbers of the COVID-19 cases and deaths came as a shock as the country arguably leads in medical and biological fields and boasts a well-equipped and accomplished public health system.

Experts attributed the crisis partly to the government’s failure to “act in a timely way” even as “the alarm bells were ringing from late December onward”.

Four major mistakes

An investigative report published by The Washington Post listed four major mistakes the White House made over the first 70 days of the crisis that now stands as “critical time that was squandered”.

First, the White House and its public health officials mistakenly placed their trust in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC for being able to develop a diagnostic test.

On Feb 6, when the World Health Organization shipped 250,000 test kits to labs around the world, “the CDC began distributing 90 kits to a smattering of state-run health labs”. The scarcity of effective tests left officials largely blind to the true dimensions of the outbreak, the report wrote.

Second, decision-makers made an erroneous assessment of the outbreak and on most occasions lagged weeks behind the curve.

The third mistake is that the protracted argument between the White House and public health agencies over funding let the narrow window of a timely response slip away; and the fourth one is that infighting, turf wars and abrupt leadership changes “hobbled the work of the coronavirus task force”.

“Beyond the suffering in store for thousands of victims and their families, the outcome has altered the international standing of the United States, damaging and diminishing its reputation as a global leader in times of extraordinary adversity,” concluded The Washington Post.