Coronavirus Death in the US is Rising, while Cases in China Falling

In the United States, the death toll from the coronavirus infection climbed to six this week. Across the world so far nearly 3,100 people have succumbed to the illness. According to WHO, cases in China are now towards the falling trend, with nine times as many cases are recorded outside China as inside.

New cases of Coronavirus infection are recorded in Andorra, Indonesia, the Czech Republic, Jordan, Tunisia, Latvia, Portugal, and Saudi Arabia.

All the six deaths in the US deaths are recorded in the state of Washington, where the health officials have already warned the residents that the battle against the disease is now shifting from containment to mitigation.

Jeff Duchin, the Health officer in King County, which recorded five deaths in the US says, “The risk for all of us of becoming infected will be increasing.” The district is also home to Seattle, a city with a population of more than 700,000 people.

The White House so far has been accused of downplaying the threat from the coronavirus. Vice President Mike Pence has declared that a treatment “could literally be available by this summer, or early fall.”

Here, Pence was referring to remdesivir, an antiviral drug that is developed by the pharmaceutical firm Gilead and has already been in use to treat one US patient. Pence also informed that the American pharmaceutical companies are teaming up in a consortium to fight the virus.

He also informed that South Korea and Italy, two of the hardest-hit nations are instructed to screen all their airline passengers bound for the US.

In spite of having world-class hospitals and cutting edge research methodology in place, the US is viewed as vulnerable to the epidemic because of the glaring disparities in its health care system, which also include 28 million people, who are still without health coverage.

The fear of epidemic is on the rise after the virus, which emerged in China late last year, proved to be fatal. The World Health Organisation has urged all the countries of the world to stock up critical care ventilators to treat patients with severe symptoms. 

The chief of WHO Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said a “window of opportunity remained to contain the outbreak, noting that more than 130 countries have not detected any cases yet.”

Till now across the world, the virus has infected nearly 90,000 people in more than 60 nations. Among the European countries, Italy is the worst affected with around 1,700 infections and its deaths from the virus had jumped from 18 to 52.