2 million cases and counting: US COVID-19 outbreak charges on amid reopening

Enlarge / A nurse on infection control accompanies a patient being transferred from the ICU COVID unit to the acute care COVID unit at Harborview Medical Center on May 7, 2020 in Seattle, Washington. (credit: Getty | Karen Ducey)

Cases of COVID-19 in the US have now exceeded 2 million, according to multiple tracking efforts. Deaths from the new coronavirus pandemic stand at 112,000 nationwide.

Both figures are expected to be underestimates, given difficulties and inconsistencies in identifying and logging all the infections and deaths. Still, with the official figures, the US now claims more than 25 percent of all COVID-19 cases globally despite having less than 5 percent of the global population.

Some states are seeing sustained declines of new cases, but others are seeing increases-leading to a high plateau for the US overall. "We're identifying between 20,000 and 25,000 new cases a day, and about 800 to 1,000 people a day are dying of this virus" nationwide, Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told NPR.

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