Chicago and other cities across the US Midwest braced for a potential surge in Covid-19 victims after the death toll in United States eclipsed Italy’s to become the highest in the world. A running tally from the US-based Johns Hopkins University showed that the number of deaths surged to over 20,608 in the US on Sunday, while nearly 19,500 people had lost their lives in Italy, which previously bore the grim record for the highest death toll during the global coronavirus pandemic. Nonetheless, US President Donald Trump has said he wants life in the United States to return to normal as soon as possible, and that he would use “facts and instincts” to make a decision on whether to recommend opening up areas of the country for working life to resume. “I think it’s going to be the toughest decision I ever made and hopefully the most difficult I will ever have to make,” Trump told Fox News on Saturday evening. “I hope I’m going to make the right decision. I will be basing it on a lot of very smart people, a lot of professionals, doctors and business leaders. There are a lot of things that go into a decision like that. And it’s going to be based on a lot of facts and instincts.” Trump says he didn’t know of, still hasn’t seen Navarro memos In the US – which has by far the highest number of confirmed coronavirus cases globally, with almost 530,000 infections – New York remains the hardest hit, with more cases in the state than in any country in the world. But fear mounted over the spread of the scourge into the nation’s heartland. Twenty-four residents of an Indiana nursing home hit by Covid-19 have died, while a nursing home in Iowa saw 14 deaths. Chicago’s Cook County has set up a temporary morgue that can take more than 2,000 bodies. And Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has been going around telling groups of people to “break it up”. On Saturday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said 783 more people had died, which was consistent with the daily death toll in recent days, taking the total number of deaths in the state to more than 8,600. “You can see that the number is somewhat stabilising, but it is stabilising at a horrific rate,” Cuomo said. “These are just incredible numbers, depicting incredible loss and pain.” In encouraging news, Cuomo reiterated that the curve was continuing to flatten, with hospitalisations and intubations down. But he warned of reopening the economy too quickly in New York, the country’s financial capital, pointing to places around the world that had experienced resurgences in the virus. “Reopening is both an economic question and a public health question,” Cuomo said. “And I’m unwilling to divorce the two. You can’t ask the people of this state or this country to choose between lives lost and dollars gained.” Trump’s ‘Hail Mary’ drug push rattles his health team The governor also contradicted school policies announced by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio hours earlier, saying “there has been no decision” regarding the continuing closure of the city’s public schools system, the nation’s largest with nearly 1,900 schools. De Blasio had announced that schools would remain closed through the end of the academic year, leaving more than a million students out of school until September. More than a dozen other US states have already announced that their schools will remain closed until the end of the academic year. In the Midwest, pockets of contagion have alarmed state and city leaders and led to stricter enforcement. Nearly 300 inmates at the Cook County Jail have tested positive for the virus, and two have died. In Wisconsin, health officials expect to see an increase in coronavirus cases after thousands of people went to the polls during Wisconsin’s presidential primary Tuesday. Trump’s new coronavirus argument: 2 million people are being saved Michigan’s governor extended her state’s stay-at-home order with new provisions: people with multiple homes may no longer travel between them. And in Kansas, the state Supreme Court heard arguments in a dispute on Saturday between Democratic Governor Laura Kelly and Republican lawmakers who overturned her executive order banning religious services and funerals with more than 10 people. A new outbreak was also reported on Friday in San Francisco, where 68 residents and two staff of a homeless shelter tested positive, in one of the largest known infection clusters yet at such a facility anywhere in the country. And 36 employees became infected with the virus at a beef production plant in Greeley, Colorado. Two employees have died, said the union representing workers at the plant. The stay-at-home orders imposed on more than 90 per cent of the country have taken a huge toll on the US economy, and conversations have intensified in the White House about how long business closures and travel restrictions can be maintained. Trump’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, told Fox News that “purist medical professionals” who took the position that the only way to minimise loss of life was to shut down the economy and society until the virus was “vanquished” were “half right”. He said that would “minimise the deaths from the virus directly” but added that economic shocks also killed people, through higher depression and suicide rates and drug abuse. “So that very tough decision this president is going to be making is to have to weigh the balance and figure out which path does more damage.” The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits in the last three weeks surpassed 16 million, as weekly new claims topped 6 million for a second straight time last week. The government has said the economy shed 701,000 jobs in March. That was the most job losses since the Great Recession and ended the longest employment boom in US history from late 2010. The Trump administration renewed talk of quickly reopening the economy after an influential university research model cut its US mortality forecasts to 60,000 deaths by August 4, down from at least 100,000, assuming social-distancing measures stay. The current federal social-distancing guidelines run until April 30. Associated Press, POLITICO, DPA, Reuters