U.S. DEATH TOLL PASSES 100,000

Experts: COVID-19 likely killed far more never tested for it.

Just over four months after the government confirmed the first known case, more than 100,000 people who had the coronavirus have died in the United States.

The death toll is far higher

than in any other nation in the world.

The toll exceeds the number of U.S. military combat fatalities in every conflict since the Korean War. It matches the toll in the United States of the 1968 flu pandemic, and it is approaching the 116,000 killed in another flu outbreak a decade before that.

In Georgia, 44,638 cases and 1,933 deaths have been reported as Wednesday evening.

The pandemic is on track to be the country’s deadliest public health disaster since the 1918 flu pandemic, in which about 675,000 Americans died.

“It’s a striking reminder of how dangerous this virus can be,” said Josh Michaud, associate director of global health

policy with the Kaiser Family Foundation in Washington.

Worldwide, the virus has infected more than 5.6 million people and killed over 350,000, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. Europe has recorded about 170,000 deaths.

The true death toll from the virus, which emerged in China late last year and was first reported in the U.S. in

January, is widely believed to be significantly higher, with experts saying many victims died of COVID-19 without ever being tested for it.

At the end of March, the United States eclipsed China with 3,500 deaths. Now the U.S. has not only the highest death total, but the highest number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the world, making up more than 30% of the global total.

Early on, President Donald Trump downplayed the severity of the coronavirus and called it no worse than the common flu.

As early as March, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, was warning that COVID-19 could claim more than 100,000 lives in the U.S.

“I think we’ll be substantially under that number,” Trump said on April 10. Ten days later, he said, “We’re going toward 50- or 60,000 people.” Ten days after that: “We’re probably heading to 60,000, 70,000.”

Critics have said deaths spiked because Trump was slow to respond, but he has said that it could have been 20 times higher without his actions. He is urging states to reopen their economies after months of stay-at-home restrictions.

The virus exacted an especially vicious toll on New York City and its surrounding suburbs, killing more than 21,000. At the peak, hundreds of people were dying per day in New York City, and hospitals, ambulances and first responders were inundated with patients.

The densely packed New York metropolitan area, consisting of about 20 million people across a region that encompasses the city’s northern suburbs, Long Island and northern New Jersey, has been the hardest-hit corner of the country, accounting for at least onethird of the nation’s deaths.

There is no vaccine or treatment for COVID-19, though several emergency treatments are being used after showing some promise in preliminary testing.

Worldwide, about a dozen vaccine candidates are starting to be tested or getting close to it. Health officials have said studies of a potential vaccine might be done by late this year or early next year.

For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia and death.

From Jan. 1 through the end of April, the U.S. saw at least 66,000 more overall deaths than in similar periods for previous years, an increase of around 7%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The coronavirus was reported as a cause in about half the excess deaths, but experts also believe the virus was likely a factor in many others. Coroners caution that deaths from other causes are likely up, too, including those from drug overdoses and among people who delayed treatment for problems like heart attacks.

It’s not even clear when the coronavirus turned deadly in the United States. Initially, it was believed the first U.S. deaths from the virus were in late February in a Seattle suburb. But by mid-April, it was determined that two people with the coronavirus died in California as many as three weeks earlier.

Comparing countries is tricky, given varying levels of testing and the fact that some coronavirus deaths can be missed. According to figures tracked by Johns Hopkins University, the death rate per 100,000 people is lower in the U.S. than in Italy, France and Spain but higher than in Germany, China, South Korea, Singapore, Japan, New Zealand and Australia.

“The experience of other countries shows that death at that scale was preventable,” Michaud said. “To some extent, the United States suffers from having a slow start and inconsistent approach. We might have seen a different trajectory if different policies were put into place earlier and more forcefully.”

Countries with low death rates suppressed the virus “through lots of testing, contact tracing and policies to support isolation and quarantine of people at risk,” Michaud said.

Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, director of ICAP, a global health center at Columbia University, called the U.S. death rate shocking.

“It reflects the fact that we have neglected basic fundamentals for health,” El-Sadr said. “We have neglected public health, and we have failed to secure access to quality health services to all Americans.”

“So now we are in this shameful situation,” El-Sadr said. “It is the most vulnerable people in our midst, the elderly, the poor, members of racial/ethnic minority groups who are the ones disproportionately getting sick and dying.”

For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia and death.