Coronavirus: 10 million Americans infected as Europe’s hospitals buckle under strain
- By Monday morning, total US deaths had surpassed 237,000, with hundreds of thousands of more projected over the coming winter months
- The virus has also been surging in Europe, which is fast running out of intensive care beds – and the doctors and nurses to staff them
US infections early in the pandemic were concentrated in Seattle, New York and other urban coastal regions, but recent transmission is geographically widespread.
We’re seeing the equivalent of two 747s crashing per day, killing everybody on board
“Ten million cases in a 300 million population tells you we have a long way to go, and a lot more people at risk,” said Dr Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, adding that the milestone was “a prelude to the hundreds of thousands more deaths we’re projecting”.
By Monday morning, total deaths had surpassed 237,000. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it expected that figure to grow by around 20,000 over the next two weeks.
“We’re seeing the equivalent of two 747s crashing per day, killing everybody on board,” said Dr Carlos del Rio, a global health epidemiologist at Emory University. “You’d imagine, at some point, someone would say, ‘What’s going on with planes?’ There would be outrage. And I’m not seeing the outrage.”
Federal researchers suspect the pandemic has indirectly led to the deaths of tens of thousands more Americans who avoided hospital care for other illnesses or overdosed on drugs because of psychological stress, for example – bringing the true US death toll closer to 300,000.