US daily deaths go past 2,000 as cases cross 19mn globally

WASHINGTON:DAILY coronavirus deaths in the US surged to a three-month high of over 2,000 on Thursday and the number of cases passed 19 million globally, pushing many nations to further ratchet up restrictions in the battle against the Covid-19 pandemic.

The world’s hardest-hit country, the United States, has seen a major coronavirus resurgence since the end of June, adding 2,060 deaths in 24 hours alone on Thursday, a tracker by Johns Hopkins University showed.

Hard-hit California has surpassed 10,000 coronavirus fatalities, making it the American state with the third-highest number of deaths since the start of the pandemic.

Elsewhere, Africa’s Covid-19 infections touched one million. More than half of those infections have been reported in South Africa, which has the fifth highest number of infections in the world, after the US, Brazil, India and Russia.

At least 19,000,553 cases and 712,315 deaths have been registered globally, figures compiled by AFP from official sources at showed, driven by surges in Latin America and India.

The US has recorded the most deaths with almost 160,000, followed by Brazil with nearly 100,000.

ASYMPTOMATIC PEOPLE HAVE HIGH VIRAL LOADS

People who are infected with the coronavirus disease carry similar levels of the pathogen in their nose, throat and lungs even if they are asymptomatic, a study from South Korea that was published in JAMA Internal Medicine showed.

The study was carried out by a team of researchers led by Seungjae Lee at Soonchunhyang University College of Medicine.