The U.S. coronavirus case count topped 6 million on Monday, even
though infections are falling in nearly every state and the death
count appears to have reached a plateau.
The milestone, based on a tracker
maintained by Johns Hopkins University, comes at a fragile point of
the pandemic, with seemingly positive trends tempered by a slowdown
in testing and intensifying concern about new hot spots
in colleges trying reopen.
It took less than a month for the case count to rise from 5
million, on Aug. 9. But the spread of the virus appears to be
stabilizing, similar to conditions in May, before premature
reopenings and insufficient public health efforts like contact
tracing and testing led to significant rebounds. The U.S. is now
reporting just over 42,000 daily new cases on average, down from
roughly 65,000 during the height of this summer’s outbreak.
The U.S. case count remains well ahead of Brazil and India,
which have the second and third highest tallies and combined
account for more than 7.3 million infections. The U.S. also
continues to lead in Covid-19 fatalities, with more than 183,000
deaths. Health experts largely agree the official U.S. numbers are
likely an undercount of the virus’ actual toll.
The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics
and Evaluation, which maintains a forecasting model closely watched
by the White House, last week predicted
more than 260,000 could die from the virus by Election Day, a
44 percent increase from current levels.
The course of the virus continues to hang over the presidential
race, with President Donald Trump pressing Democratic-led states to
reopen and using last week’s Republican National Convention to urge
Americans to return to work and school. The campaign of Democratic
nominee Joe Biden has assailed Trump’s “incompetent” response to
the pandemic and blamed him for the faltering economy and
staggering job losses.
Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress and Trump’s administration
remain gridlocked over the size of a new coronavirus relief bill.
Trump on Friday indicated he’s willing to sign a $1.3 trillion
package, a $300 billion increase from the White House and Senate
Republicans’ original $1 trillion offer but still well below the
$2.2 trillion that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and congressional Democrats
have offered.
