The United States recorded 1,568 new coronavirus deaths in the past 24 hours, bringing the total deaths from COVID-19 to 78,746, according to the latest count reported by Johns Hopkins University at 8:30 p.m. Saturday (00:30 GMT Sunday). Thus, it is consolidated as the country most affected by the pandemic in terms of the number of deaths. The total number of infections reaches 1,309,164 cases, reported the Baltimore-based educational centre.
New York State remains the great epicentre of the pandemic, with 330,000 infections and 26,000 deaths. It is estimated that more than 19,000 people have died in New York City alone. At today’s press conference, Governor Andrew Cuomo reported that two other minors died from Kawasaki disease, linked to the coronavirus, increasing to three the number of children who have lost their lives in the state. Kawasaki disease causes inflammation of the blood vessels in children (skin rashes, nodes, conjunctivitis, heart problems in their most serious types).
Cuomo also announced that a total of 22 churches located in the neighbourhoods of New York most affected by COVID-19 will begin to analyze the coronavirus as of May 12, as part of a campaign to increase tests in the African-American and Latin American communities, the most affected by the pandemic.
As reported today by the New York Times, which carried out its own count of victims, a third of the deaths from COVID-19 registered in the United States have occurred in nursing homes. In its edition of this Saturday, the newspaper assures that 25,600 people between residents and workers in centres dedicated to the elderly have lost their lives since the outbreak of the pandemic. Likewise, the publication ensures that more than 143,000 people have been infected in some 7,500 centres throughout the national territory.
The newspaper says that in the absence of exhaustive data from some states and the federal government, it has been assembling its own database of cases of coronavirus and deaths in care centres for the elderly. These include nursing homes, assisted living facilities, memory care facilities, retirement and nursing communities, and rehabilitation facilities.
The NYT also draws attention to the fact that in a dozen states, the number of residents and workers who have died at these facilities is more than double the total death toll. This is the case of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Virginia, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Kentucky, Delaware, Kansas, Oregon, West Virginia and Vermont. In West Virginia, for example, the newspaper indicates that the number of people killed in nursing homes represents 81 per cent of deaths in total, within that state.