This article is more than 5 months old

This article is more than 5 months old

The US has suffered more confirmed coronavirus deaths than any other country, and on Saturday was poised to soon reach 20,000 Covid-19 fatalities, new data indicated.

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By Saturday evening, Johns Hopkins University’s tally of US Covid-19 fatalities was at 19,877. Italy followed with 19,468. The US was also the first country to report 2,000 deaths in a single day, with 2,108 people dying in the previous 24 hours.

New York, the hardest-hit US state, saw 783 deaths on Friday, raising the total to 8,627, governor Andrew Cuomo said at a briefing in Albany, the state capital.

“That is not an all-time high, and you can see that the numbers [are] somewhat stabilizing – but it is stabilizing at a horrific rate,” Cuomo said.

Also on Saturday, the New York Times published a devastating report chronicling Donald Trump’s repeated failures over several months to take the coronavirus crisis seriously, and how the president’s suspicion of the so-called Deep State “colored” his response even as the death toll began to soar.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins had tallied 514,292 confirmed US cases. Spain followed with 161,852 and Italy ranked third in confirmed cases, at 152,271. There have been 29,507 reported recoveries in the US, the researchers also said.

Worldwide coronavirus deaths now total 108,167. Confirmed cases have reached 1,765,030. Recorded worldwide recoveries total 396,693.

The US coronavirus crisis is widely recognized to have been exacerbated by slow federal responses and patchwork state-level approaches.

“The shortcomings of Mr Trump’s performance have played out with remarkable transparency as part of his daily effort to dominate television screens and the national conversation,” the Times reported, referring to the president’s rambling and falsehood-ridden press briefings from the White House, which even Republican allies believe are hurting his popularity.

No briefing was scheduled for Saturday.

The Times article added more recent detail to the Guardian’s in-depth investigation of Trump’s missing six weeks published two weeks ago.

Guardian reporting found that a botched rollout of testing, the decision to disband the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s pandemic response team and Trump’s reliance on his own hunches over professional medical advice contributed to confusion and lack of leadership at a critical moment.

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Specifically, the Times notes that Trump’s belief in the existence of a “Deep State” of bureaucrats and intelligence officials dedicated to his downfall – a conspiracy theory dismissed by even his closest allies as “for nut cases” – caused him to ignore warnings from government experts.

“He could have seen what was coming,” the Times headline said.

In a statement, White House spokesman Judd Deere said: “While the media and Democrats refused to seriously acknowledge this virus in January and February, President Trump took bold action to protect Americans.”

On Friday, White House task force public health expert Dr Deborah Birx said there were signs the outbreak was stabilising, but warned: “We have not reached the peak.”

Dr Anthony Fauci, the top US expert on infectious diseases, recently said the US outbreak would approach its end when new infections numbered almost zero, with the number of deaths close behind.

“I believe that in a few months, hopefully, that we’ll get it under control enough that it won’t be as frightening as it is now, but it will not be an absent threat,” Fauci told the Times.

On MSNBC on Friday, Fauci was asked if the presidential election in November might be affected. The doctor indicated that was not his area of expertise, replying: “I would hope that by November we would have things under such control that we could have a real degree of normality. That’s my interest and my job as a public health person.”

Questions about normalcy are especially fueled by the stalled US economy, as coronavirus-related business closures and slowdowns have caused 16 million people to lose their jobs.

Trump has pushed for a reopening of the economy and reportedly hopes to do so by May. But the president has also qualified this hope somewhat, saying at Friday’s briefing: “I want to get it open as soon as possible … I would love to open it. I’m not determined.”

Trump is expected to announce a council of medical and business leaders to assist him with the “biggest decision I’ve ever had to make”: when to reopen America for business amid a global pandemic.

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In New York on Saturday, Cuomo also addressed questions about reopening the economy in his briefing.

“This is no time for politics,” he said.

“You start to hear this dialogue on reopening, and you start to hear people with political theories on whether we should open faster, whether we should reopen sooner,” Cuomo said. “That is corrosive and destructive – and if we don’t stop it, it will feed on itself.

“We don’t know if there’s going to be a second wave or not.”

Health experts have warned that prematurely lifting stay-at-home restrictions could prompt a “deadly resurgence” of coronavirus.