US Coronavirus death toll goes past 150,000

Washington, July 30: The US has recorded over 150,000 Covid-19 deaths, another grim milestone that comes amidst warning from a top IndianAmerican physician that the country has failed to arrest the spread of the deadly pandemic. America’s Coronavirus death toll was 150,676 as of Wednesday — more than a fifth of the world’s recorded deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The US also had over 4,426,000 confirmed cases, making it the world’s worst-hit country. The first death in the US was reported on February 29. The country reached 50,000 deaths 54 days later on April 23, and 34 days later, on May 27, crossed 100,000 deaths. It has taken 63 days to add another 50,000 to reach the 150,000 mark, CNN reported.

“I think the fact that we as a country have not been able to get our arms around this, have not prioritised preventing those deaths is all that much more maddening,” Dr Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said. “And so, for me it’s frustration, it’s sadness. And a resolve to try to figure out how we prevent the next 150,000,” Jha told CNN. “I think we can, but we’re really going to have to work for it,” he added.

Some states in the US are seeing their highest death tolls. California on Wednesday reported 197 Covid-related deaths in a single day, according to state Department of Public Health. That total far outpaces the previous high of 159, recorded just last week. Florida also reported a record 216 deaths on Wednesday. Infectious disease experts say the US is at a critical juncture, as debates about how and whether to reopen schools for in-person learning are taking place across the country.

Careless youth driving some COVID-19 spikes, says WHO Beijing, July 30: China’s Geneva, July 30: The World Health Organisation on Thursday warned that spikes in Coronavirus transmission in a number of countries were being driven by young people “letting down their guard”. “Young people are not invincible,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual news conference in Geneva.

While the pandemic, which has killed nearly 670,000 and infected more than 17 million people worldwide, has disproportionately impacted the elderly and people with pre-existing conditions, he stressed that “younger people are at risk too”.

He lamented that a major challenge in trying to rein in the Coronavirus was “convincing younger people of this risk”. He said there was evidence that “spikes of cases in some countries are being driven in part by younger people letting down their guard.” WHO’s technical lead for Covid-19 Maria Van Kerkhove lamented that nightclubs had become “amplifiers” of transmission. Tedros insisted that “young people must take the same precautions to protect themselves and protect others as everyone else”.