Three million cases in the United States: “We are in good position,” said Trump

President Donald Trump in Washington, Tuesday

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July 8, 2020 10h51

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Three million cases in the United States: “We are in good position,” said Trump

Ivan Crown

Agence France-Presse

WASHINGTON – The United States will Wednesday, three million cases of the COVID-19, but Donald Trump continues to say that the mortality is in decline, this is false in the largest current outbreak of contagion.

The country had put three months to reach a million cases, at the end of April, at the same time as the european Union. In the meantime, the United States has detected two million new cases when the EU added 270.000. The last million was added in less than a month.

The Americans never come out of their first wave, which has moved geographically, and the indicators are in the red in several of the most populous States, such as Texas and Florida: every day there are more cases, more hospital beds occupied, more deaths.

Their president denies the reality of this resurgence and has even tweeted on Wednesday that “the mortality rate of coronavirus (had) been divided by ten!”.

This assertion is misleading: it is true that, on average, the country is far short of the record of the death of April, when the balance sheet daily exceeded 3,000 deaths, compared to the 600 these last few days.

But there are two countries in one: the North-East, around New York, retains control of the coronavirus and see their balance sheets decline continuously. This compensates for the increases in indisputable in the South and in the West. The national average is stable, but in reality, a health crisis began in a vast part of the territory.

“We went upstairs, we never back down to the base level, and here we are in the process of going back”, said Anthony Fauci, the highest expert in infectious diseases of the u.s. government, which sounds the alarm more and more strongly.

In many parts of the South and West, the number of cases is increasing faster than the number of tests, which proves that the virus is circulating more and more, and that the increase in cases is not due solely to the testing of mild cases and asymptomatic, which would not have been detected in the spring, when there was a shortage of tests.

Arizona has the double of daily deaths as a month ago (42 deaths per day on average for the past week, compared with 19 deaths, according to the Covid Tracking Project). The number of patients for the coronavirus hospitalized has tripled in a month.

Local Actions, inaction, federal

In Australia, Melbourne is reconfinée after you have registered 191 new cases in 24 hours. Texas and Florida have announced more than 10,000 Tuesday, but the inhabitants still déconfinés.

The mayors of the two largest cities in Texas, Houston and Austin, have warned in recent days that their hospitals would be overwhelmed in two weeks, foreshadowing a situation similar to what New York experienced in march and April.

If we compare that to the european Union, the number of deaths per capita is seven times higher today in the United States (1,80 death per million inhabitants, compared to 0.25 in the EU, according to Our World in Data).

Even States that are rural, spared in the spring, are earned by the epidemic. In Montana, Wyoming or Idaho, each person infected infects 1.3 in average, according to rt.live, a flag which must remain below 1 to stop the epidemic.

In the absence of federal actions, the governors of States or mayors have acted here and there, ordering them under penalty of a fine port of the mask when the remote person is not possible, or closing down bars, restaurants and other gathering places. But the patchwork of measures and the inconsistent public health messages play in favour of the virus.

Interviewed Tuesday on Fox News, Donald Trump said he was in disagreement with dr. Fauci, saying: “We are in a good position (…) We have done a good job. I think that by two, three, four weeks, we will be in an excellent position”.

In the next four weeks, more than 15,000 Americans will die of the COVID-19, according to the average of multiple epidemiological models published by the university of Massachusetts, or a total of 147.000 on the 1st August.

BALANCE SHEET OF THE PANDEMIC IN THE WORLD AT 11AM GMT

PARIS – The pandemic of the new coronavirus that has killed at least 544.311 dead in the world since the WHO office in China has reported the appearance of the disease at the end of December, according to a report drawn up by AFP from official sources on Wednesday at 11am GMT.

Most of 11.853.530 cases of infection have been officially diagnosed in 196 countries and territories since the beginning of the epidemic, including at least 6.266.100 are now considered as cured.

This number of diagnosed cases does not reflect, however, that a fraction of the real number of infections. Some countries test only for severe cases, others use the tests as a priority for tracing and number of poor countries do not have that capacity screening limited.

The United States, who have identified their first death linked to the coronavirus in the beginning of February, are the most affected country both in the number of deaths in that case, with 131.480 death for 2.996.098 case. At least 936.476 people have been declared cured.

After the United States, the countries most affected are Brazil with 66.741 dead for 1.668.589 case, the United Kingdom with 44.391 dead (286.349 cases), Italy with 34.899 dead (241.956 case), and Mexico with 32.014 dead (268.008 case).

China (without the territories of Hong Kong and Macao) has officially counted a total of 83.572 cases (7 new between Tuesday and Wednesday), which 4.634 death (0 new), and 78.548 healings.

Europe totaled Wednesday at 11: 00 GMT 200.524 death for 2.764.140 case, the United States and Canada 140.231 death (3.102.205 cases), Latin America and the Caribbean 132.750 death (3.036.382 case), the Asia 39.959 death (1.573.249 case), the Middle East 18.716 death (856.790 case), the Africa 11.996 death (510.323 case), and Oceania 135 deaths (10.443 case).

This balance sheet was created from data collected by the offices of the AFP with national competent authorities and information from the world health Organization (WHO).

Le Soleil