The coronavirus pandemic crossed two bleak milestones over the weekend, with total global cases topping 10 million and confirmed deaths crossing over 500,000. Bleaker still, nations around the world are seeing more younger populations' infection rates increasing, warning of the virus's coming spread to the more vulnerable to fatal infections. The World Health Organization's Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned on Monday that the pandemic is accelerating around the world, meaning that the worst of the virus's outbreak hasn't happened yet.
"Although many countries have made some progress, globally, the pandemic is actually speeding up," Tedros stated during the agency's press briefing in Geneva on Monday. "We all want this to be over. We all want to get on with our lives, but the hard reality is that this is not even close to being over."
According to data from the W.H.O., more than 60% of the daily new global infections came from countries in North, South and Central America on Sunday. Moreover, about 23% of Sunday's global infections came for the United States.
In the United States, some state governors have begun to join others that have paused their phased reopening plans as infection rates surge. Yet, more social restrictions may be required to control the enduring spread, as Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, stated that the U.S. is reporting too many daily cases to contain the outbreak.
"We're not in the situation of New Zealand or Singapore or [South] Korea where a new case is rapidly identified and all the contacts are traced and people are isolated who are sick and people who are exposed are quarantined and they keep things under control," Schuchat stated in an interview with The Journal of the American Medical Association's Editor-in-Chief Dr. Howard Bauchner, released on Monday. "We have way too much virus across the country for that right now, so it's very discouraging."
"What we have in the United States, it's hard to describe because it's so many different outbreaks. There was a wave of incredible accelerating, intense interventions and control measures that have brought things down to a much lower level of circulations in the New York City, Connecticut, New Jersey area. But in much of the rest of the country, there's still a lot of virus," Schuchat added.
Total Global Cases: Over 10.4 Million
Total Deaths: Over 500,000
Total Recovered: Over 5.65 Million
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