Currents News Staff
The United States continues to report more COVID-19 cases and deaths than any other country. That’s according to new numbers out Aug. 2 from Johns Hopkins University.
This comes as the White House Coronavirus Task Force Coordinator, Dr. Deborah Birx warns that the U.S. is in a new phase of the pandemic.
“What we’re seeing today is much different from March and April,” said Birx. “It’s extraordinarily more widespread. It’s into the rural as equal as urban areas.”
According to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University, there are more than 4.6 million COVID-19 cases in the U.S. and more than 154,000 Americans have died from the virus.
Meanwhile, a forecast published by the Center for Disease Control projects that the death toll could climb to 173,000 by Aug. 22.
The rising case numbers continue to frustrate UCLA’s epidemiology professor Anne Rimoin.
“It’s very frustrating as an epidemiologist to see these case numbers continuing to rise without a national strategy, without adequate testing, without contact tracing as we need it,” said Rimoin. “All of the things we’ve been talking about for months and months and these numbers are going to continue to go up, until we do have these things in place.”
Dr. Birx says there are 20 states that she’s watching very closely and that each state must tailor its response to mitigate cases. She also stressed that we must follow health recommendations to slow the spread including wearing a mask and practicing social distancing.
“It’s not super spreading individuals, it’s super spreading events and we need to stop those,” said Birx. “We definitely need to take more precautions.”