KEY POINTS The U.S. still leads the world in total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases

It became the country with the second largest number of deaths Wednesday

On the other hand, there are welcome signs of a levelling off in daily cases in eight states

Wednesday saw Americans reel from the news 1,939 people died in the United States from COVID-19. This toll made Wednesday the deadliest single day anywhere in the world since the first death from the coronavirus was confirmed in Wuhan, China on January 11, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Of course, it was also the deadliest day in the U.S. in an unending string of deadliest days extending back to February 29 when the first American died from COVID-19. The 1,939 fatalities indicate the revised statistical estimates of 3,130 deaths in the U.S. on April 16 predicted by IHME (the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation) at the University of Washington might not be that farfetched.

The United States has, by far, the largest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the world and before Wednesday ends will have the world's second largest death count after Italy. The U.S. has to contend with 430,902 cases as of 9:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday, based on Worldometer data.

Its 14,766 deaths is only 26 deaths fewer than Spain's 14,792. Italy still leads the world in fatalities with 17,669 and is third in total number of cases with 139,422. Worldwide there were more than 1.51 million COVID-19 cases and more than 88,433 deaths.

The good news for the U.S. in this gloom is that more and more Americans are recovering from this infectious disease. As of Wednesday, there were 22,356 confirmed recoveries, the largest number yet, compared to 21,674 on Tuesday.

The unrelenting upward trend in recoveries is being bolstered by welcome news of case count slowdowns in an increasing number of states. States reporting a marked and welcome slowdown in their rates of new cases include California, New York, New Jersey, Louisiana, Maine, Ohio, Maryland, and Washington, which was the locus of the first large number of cases in the U.S.

New York's case count is the highest in the country but its casualty count has begun to fall. On Wednesday, New York reported 10,453 new coronavirus cases, taking its total number of cases to 149,316. At least 779 new fatalities were reported in the state, the highest single-day total so far.

New York governor Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday social distancing measures adopted are working based on data he's seen.

“There is good news in what we are seeing: that what we have done, and what we are doing, is actually working and it’s making a difference,” said Cuomo. “It is flattening the curve.” But he said now is not the time to get complacent, and "it’s not a time to be doing anything different than we are doing.”

New Jersey governor Phil Murphy was also happy about the good news cases counts seem to be declining in his state. He said while it's “too early to tell, but we are seeing the positive cases that are coming out each day continue to show a little bit of a sign of flattening, and that’s a good thing.”

After going through some statistical modeling today, Murphy said "the good news is that we don’t have the runaway freight train catastrophe that we would have had if we had done nothing."