The US now has now overtaken Italy to have the highest COVID – 19 death toll in the world , according to data from multiple sources.
Tallies by Johns Hopkins University ,
New York Times and Reuters news agency , all show that the country had no fewer than 20 , 506 COVID -19 -related deaths.
With this , Italy , which used to be top , has fallen one step behind with no fewer than 19 ,468 deaths as of Saturday afternoon .
On Friday , the U.S . also became the first county in the world to record no fewer than 2 ,000 deaths in a single day .
As of Saturday evening , there were no fewer than 528 , 301 confirmed cases of the deadly virus across the country , according to the New York Times database .
New York remains the U. S. epicentre with no fewer than 180 ,458 cases which represents 34 per cent of the total , and 8 ,627 deaths representing 42 per cent of the country -wide fatalities .
New Jersey , Michigan, Massachusetts, California , Pennsylvania and Louisiana follow with no fewer than 20 , 000 cases each, and 2 ,183 , 1 ,391 , 686 , 629 , 506 and 806 deaths respectively .
Public health experts are warning that the U .S. death toll could reach 200 ,000 over the summer if stay -at- home orders are lifted after 30 days .
President Donald Trump has always argued that his country is reporting the highest figures because it is conducting more tests than any other in the world .
Data compiled by Worldometer , a reference website that provides real -time statistics for diverse topics , show that the U .S. had conducted over 2. 6 million tests as of Saturday evening .
This is twice higher than tests carried out by Germany and Russia, the closest countries with no fewer than 1 .3 million and 1. 1 million respectively .
The website has no data on the number of tests conducted by China where the virus broke out in December .
China ’s COVID -19 cases and deaths stood at 8 ,052 and 3, 339 as of Saturday , figures dismissed by U. S. politicians and activists as a downplay.
