Health

US records highest single-day death toll since coronavirus outbreak with baby among victims



The number of people in the United States to die from the coronavirus has topped 5,000 after the country recorded its highest single-day toll, which included a six-week-old baby.

Johns Hopkins University revealed that 884 people had died in 24 hours. More than 216,000 are now infected across the US — the world’s highest figure.

Among the latest fatalities was a baby from Connecticut who is believed to be America’s youngest victim of Covid-19.


The infant was brought to a hospital unresponsive last week and could not be revived, the state’s governor Ned Lamont said last night.

“This is a virus that attacks our most fragile without mercy,” Mr Lamont tweeted, calling the death “absolutely heartbreaking”.

Four new states — Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and Nevada — imposed sweeping stay-at-home directives in response to the pandemic, putting more than 80 per cent of Americans under lockdown.

President Donald Trump told a White House briefing he was considering a plan to halt flights to coronavirus hot spots like New York City, which has seen over 1,300 deaths.

“We’re certainly looking at it, but once you do that you really are clamping down on an industry that is desperately needed,” he said.

Such a plan might also conceivably shut down traffic at airports in hard-hit New Orleans and Detroit. “We’re looking at the whole thing,” Mr Trump said of curtailing domestic flights, already greatly reduced as demand has fallen.

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White House medical experts have forecast that even if Americans stay in their homes to slow the spread, some 100,000 to 240,000 people could die from the coronavirus.

A Pentagon official said the defence department was working to provide up to 100,000 body bags for use by civilian authorities in the coming weeks.

New York state remained the epicentre of the outbreak, accounting for more than a third of the US deaths.

Governor Andrew Cuomo yesterday told police to enforce rules more aggressively for social distancing. “Young people must get this message, and they still have not gotten the message. You still see too many situations with too much density by young people,”

Mr Cuomo said while imposing rules to close playgrounds, basketball courts and similar spaces. “How reckless and irresponsible and selfish for people not to do it on their own,” he said.

New York City mayor Bill de Blasio told a news conference the city was taking contracts with hotels as part of a massive effort to add 65,000 hospital beds by the end of the month. He said the city had arranged to add 10,000 beds at 20 hotels, which have lost most of their guests as travel has stopped.

“This is going to be an epic process during the month of April to build out all that capacity,” he said. “But this goal can be reached.”

New York’s state-wide death toll from the coronavirus doubled in 72 hours to more than 1,900. In the city, the wail of ambulances in otherwise eerily quiet streets provides the heartbreaking soundtrack of the crisis. “It’s like a battlefield behind your home,” said Queens resident, Emma Sorza, 33.

In California, where cases surged by around 1,300 to nearly 10,000, Governor Gavin Newsom warned the state would run out of intensive care beds equipped with ventilators within six weeks.

“We are in a completely different place than the state of New York and I hope we will continue to be, but we won’t unless people continue to practise physical distancing,” he said.



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