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American Covid-19 coronavirus numbers keep rising, topping 189,000 early Wednesday morning, up from about 164,000 from the day before, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. More than 50,000 new cases have been diagnosed over the past two days.

New York City and its surrounding counties remain the epicenter of the American outbreak with more than 77,000 cases, up about 8,000 cases over the past day.

About 15,000 people in New York state have been hospitalized, accounting for more than half of the 26,660 U.S. hospitalizations, according to the Corona Tracking Project.

Deaths due to Covid-19 complications recently topped 1,000 in New York City and 4,000 in the U.S. Globally, more than 42,000 people have died from more than 862,000 confirmed cases. New coronavirus cases diagnosed over the past day tallied another 60,000 Tuesday.

Rising hospitalization means a need for more ventilators. Ford Motor (F) and General Electric (GE) announced a partnership Monday. General Motors (GM) will also start producing a ventilator designed by Ventec Life Systems.

Ford plans to manufacture about 200,000 ventilators in 2020. It’s a scale far beyond what the typical ventilator company produces. Exact numbers are difficult to find, but there are very roughly 200,000 ventilators in the U.S. currently.

Testing also continues to ramp higher in the U.S., with more than 1 million completed. About 872,000 tests have come back negative for Covid-19.

The World Health Organization—another important source of Covid-19 data—reported 57,610 new cases diagnosed over the past day, bringing its case total to more than 750,000. The WHO data lags behind the Hopkins database—which is updated more frequently—but the trends and totals of both data sets follow one another.

The outbreak continues to fuel stock-market volatility. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 410 points, or 1.8% Tuesday. The S&P 500 fell 1.6%.

Tuesday’s loss closed out a terrible first quarter. The Dow dropped 23.2% through the end of March. It’s the worst first quarter in the Dow’s 135-year history and the worst quarter since the fourth quarter of 1987, which included the Black Monday crash.

The S&P 500 is down 20% year to date.

Stock futures point to more losses Wednesday morning. Dow and S&P futures are off about 3%. Investors are unnerved by government projections for up to 240,000 American Covid-19 deaths.

For more Covid-19 information, here’s a link to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com