US death toll tops 100,000
Peter Wells in New York
More than 100,000 people in the US have died from coronavirus, the most in the world, according to a widely-followed tally from Johns Hopkins University.
The national total hit 100,047, ticking past the grim milestone on Wednesday evening New York time, and representing 28.3 per cent of all deaths worldwide. The US has for a number of months been the global hotspot for Covid-19, with about 1.69m confirmed cases in the country out of about 5.65m globally.
The US’s overall total exceeds the combined total of the next three hardest-hit countries — the UK, Italy and France.
Johns Hopkins University counts so-called probable deaths in its tally, which Covid Tracking Project, an alternate data source, does not. The latter puts the total number of deaths in the US since the pandemic began at 94,352 as of Wednesday afternoon.
A further 1,259 people died in the US from Covid-19 over the past 24 hours, according to data compiled by Covid Tracking Project, up from 629 on Tuesday and the largest one-day increase since May 21.
One-day increases tend to be lower at the weekend and on Monday due to slower reporting over the weekend, with a tick-up on Tuesday. That pattern was probably delayed this week owing to the Memorial Day public holiday on Monday.
Illinois, New Jersey and Pennsylvania experienced the largest one-day increases in deaths, with 160, 148 and 113, respectively. New York, the hardest-hit state overall, again managed to keep its daily rate below 100 in what has proved to be an encouraging sign amid the pandemic.