WASHINGTON: The highly contagious new coronavirus had infected more than three million people by Monday afternoon with a million confirmed cases in the United States alone, which remains the hardest country in the world.

US agencies monitoring the outbreak confirmed that the virus had killed almost 210,000 across the globe by Monday, and the death toll too was highest in the United States, almost 56,500.

Statistics indicate that every third infected person lives in the United States, with almost 300,000 in New York, America’s epicentre of Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.

Dr Tom Inglesby of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins University, said the US had reached a “very high plateau” of roughly 30,000 Covid-19 cases and around 2,000 deaths per day.

Health agencies and the US media blame America’s commercialised health system, the bureaucracy’s slow response to the pandemic and Trump administration’s lack of planning as main reasons for the large-scale fatalities.

Dr Inglesby warned in a statement that the virus was not going to go away soon. “Wherever we are in the epidemic, this virus is going to be with us until we have a vaccine,” he said.

He also advised US states wanting to resume normal economic activities to carefully monitor hospitalisation, ICU and death rates before allowing businesses to reopen.

The United States, he said, was testing around 150,000 people per day on average, but a Harvard University report estimated that at least five million tests per day were needed to safely reopen the economy. That number will need to increase to 20 million tests per day in order to fully reopen the economy and to keep it open, experts said.

As the virus continued to attack people across the globe, Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi criticised President Donald Trump’s decision to suspend funding the World Health Organization.

“It’s stupid, it’s more than stupid; it’s dangerous,” Ms Pelosi said in an interview to the National Public Radio (NPR).

She said that the Trump administration was removing references to the WHO from its documents, effectively isolating the United States. “Worse than [the funding] … this may be more harmful than just the money.”

She said now was the time for the global community to work together and not to stigmatise an international agency working to beat the pandemic.

The White House, however, continued to worry that prolonging the lockdown could trigger an economic depression that could be worse than the pandemic itself.

White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said at a Sunday afternoon news briefing that the lockdown was causing high unemployment rates, not seen since the 1930s “Great Depression”.

He said that during the “Great Recession”, the US lost 8.7 million jobs but now it was losing that many every 10 days.

The coronavirus shutdown, he said, could prove to be “the biggest negative shock that our economy I think has ever seen”.

In New York, seen as the engine driver of the US economy, Governor Andrew Cuomo said he could extend the shutdown past May 15, when it is set to expire.

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. The vast majority of people recover.

One of the best ways to prevent spread of the virus is washing your hands with soap and water.

Published in Dawn, April 28th, 2020