Health

Covid-19 has killed more Americans than last 5 US wars

By Beatriz Pascual Macias

Washington, Sep 22 (efe-epa).- Deaths from coronavirus in the United States surpassed 200,000 Tuesday, which makes the pandemic more than twice as deadly for Americans than the country’s five most recent wars put together.

The US accounts for more than one in every five of the nearly 966,000 Covid-19 fatalities worldwide, according to the independent tally maintained by specialists at Johns Hopkins University.

Next in terms of deaths is Brazil, with 137,272, followed by India (88,935), Mexico (73,697), the United Kingdom (41,877), Italy (35,738), Peru (31,369), France (31,346) and Spain (30,663).

The US mortality rate from coronavirus, roughly 60 fatalities for every 100,000 inhabitants, is lower than that of the UK, Ecuador, Spain and Brazil.

The first case of coronavirus in the US was reported on Jan. 20. The patient was a resident of Washington state who tested positive after visiting relatives in Wuhan, China, where the initial outbreak was detected.

On May 27, a little more than four months later, the US death toll topped 100,000.

Fewer than 100,000 US service-members have lost their lives in the five conflicts in which Washington has engaged since 1945, according to figures compiled by the Congressional Research Service.

At 200,005, the current total of coronavirus fatalities is nearly double the 116,516 US deaths in World War I.

America’s bloodiest conflict, the 1861-1865 Civil War, resulted in more than 650,000 deaths, while just 406,000 members of the US Armed Forces perished in World War II.

The US also leads the world in the number of confirmed Covid-19 infections, with 6.86 million.

Unsurprisingly, the four most populous states have the most cases: California, 790,679; Texas, 733,173; Florida, 687,909; and New York, 485,081.

But in terms of mortality, the impact has been greatest in New York, with 32,691 fatalities, more than twice as many as California or Texas.

President Donald Trump, who is seeking a second term in the Nov. 3 election, continues to downplay the severity of the pandemic.

“It (Covid-19) affects elderly people, elderly people with heart problems and other problems. That’s what it really affects,” the president said Monday night at a campaign rally in Ohio.

“In some states, thousands of people – nobody young. Below the age of 18, like, nobody. They have a strong immune system, who knows? Take your hat off to the young, because they have a hell of an immune system. But it affects virtually nobody. It’s an amazing thing,” Trump told supporters.

Months ago, the White House coronavirus task force said that in the best case, the US would lose between 100,000 and 240,000 lives to the illness.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine, whose models are often cited by the White House, said recently that in the “most likely scenario,” the US death toll will be around 410,000 by year’s end. EFE

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