US Coronavirus Infections Top Two Million

By Staff, Agencies

The number of confirmed COVID-19 coronavirus cases in the United States topped two million Thursday morning, according to an online tracker run by Johns Hopkins University.

The disease has so far killed a total of almost 113 thousand people in the country.

The US is currently the worst-hit country in the pandemic, as far as the official tallies go, and is followed by Brazil, where 772,416 infections have been recorded, and Russia, with its 493,023 cases.

While the number of new infections in across the United States has been going down, with the country largely reopening after a prolonged lockdown, the past few weeks saw an uptick in cases.

Some 21 states have now reported an increase in new positive tests, and the number of hospitalizations is also up in nine states: Texas, California, Arizona, Utah, Arkansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Oregon, and Mississippi.

The increase in new infections has been attributed by experts to two factors: the social outings on Memorial Day, held on May 25 this year, and the large-scale protests that swept over the US in the wake in the recent weeks.

The latter were sparked by the death of George Floyd, an African American who was pinned down to the ground with a knee to his neck by a police officer for several minutes despite pleading for air.

Relatively, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was cited as saying he was concerned that the unrest could trigger a new wave of infections.