Thursday, July 16, 2020

US Accounts for a Quarter of Global COVID-19 Tally, Urged to Act
Global Times
2020/7/14 11:30:13

The marble lion "Fortitude" is seen with a face mask in front of the New York Pubulic Library on the Fifth Avenue in New York, the United States, July 8, 2020. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

The US now accounts for about a quarter of COVID-19 cases in the world, with nearly one in every 100 Americans infected.

Global infections stand at 13 million, according to a Johns Hopkins University's latest tally, with over half a million deaths. The number of confirmed infections in the US, the world's largest economy and the country hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic, has exceeded 3.3 million as of press time. About 138,000 people have been killed by coronavirus in the US.

According to a survey jointly launched by UCLA Nationscape Project and the Democracy Fund, more than one-third of Americans (36 percent) said someone they know outside of their immediate family or work has been infected with COVID-19. The number is more than triple that of mid-March, when it was 11 percent.

As the situation continues to deteriorate, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Monday that the coronavirus pandemic raging around the globe will worsen if countries fail to adhere to strict healthcare precautions, NBC News reported.

"Too many countries are headed in the wrong direction, the virus remains public enemy number one," WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a Monday briefing, noting that if basics are not followed, the pandemic will become worse and worse.

Some observers and US politicians believe that US President Donald Trump, who wore a protective mask for the first time in public at the weekend, should be held responsible for the current situation in the US, for not taking the coronavirus seriously enough and sticking to lax strategies.

Tedros said on Monday that out of 230,000 global COVID-19 cases recorded Sunday, 80 percent were from 10 countries, and 50 percent from two countries: the US and Brazil, NBC News reported. 

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