The United States recently passed Italy’s death toll for COVID-19, setting the worldwide record with 20,000 deaths.
According to the Associated Press, the number of recorded U.S. deaths due to COVID-19 surpassed every other nation on April 11, passing Italy by over 4,000 more deaths. New York, being one of the most strongly impacted areas, has reported almost half of these recorded deaths, with over 8,600 in total.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has reported that although the number of deaths are stabilizing each day, they are still “stabilizing at a horrific rate.”
National cases have passed over 500,000 this weekend, according to Reuters News.
Trump stated that he is leaning towards not extending the current federal guidelines, which are currently up until to April 30. He believes that allowing people to return to their jobs is necessary in order to help with unemployment and save the current state of the economy. However, public health experts have stated that lifting these orders after solely 30 days may be dangerous, as that could lead to U.S. death tolls reaching around 200,000 over the summer.
Meanwhile, although cases are immensely lessening in Europe, government officials have still been tentative in releasing their citizens from lockdown, in fear of having to face the same problem once again. Several precautions have been taken to stop citizens from traveling to see their loved ones over Easter weekend, and the fantastic weather has only encouraged officials to be stricter with their guidelines.
“Don’t go out,” said Domenico Arcuri, Italy’s COVID-19 commissioner. “Continue to behave responsibly as you have done until today; use your head and your sense of responsibility.”
