In the last four hours the United States of American has overtaken Italy to become the country with the most number of coronavirus deaths in the world. With the US at 18,850 deaths and Italy at 18,849, it was not clear who was in the lead because the latter had not updated its numbers for Saturday the 11th of April. But when Italy’s updates came in with 619 new deaths placing total deaths at 19,468, the United States easily surpassed the southern European nation with 1,072 new deaths, which gave America the unenviable position of having the most COVID-19 deaths currently at over 20,000.
United States is not only struggling in the death column; it is doing just as badly in the recovery column. Despite having by far the most number of COVID-19 cases at 507,834, its recovered cases are a paltry 28,224 placing it at sixth behind China, Spain, Germany, Iran, and Italy in that order.
The relatively low recovery rate in the United States also means that its death to recovered ration is not impressive either. At death/recovered ration of 1:1.42, the United States is yet again trailing other nations with notably high confirmed cases of the COVID-19. China holds easily the best record in that category with 1:23.22 meaning that for every COVID-19 patient who dies, there are 23.22 that recovers.
No doubt there will be some serious Congressional hearings on the handling of this pandemic to ascertain who dropped the ball and where. But for now, America must get a grip on the pandemic before it gets out of hand. Right now 29.3% of all COVID-19 cases worldwide is in the United States and that number has been climbing steadily.
And while almost all others are buried into problem solving mode, the president spends much of his time in the blame game sporting a long list of targets to blame from Obama to WHO.