The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus reached 50,000 on Friday, having doubled in 10 days, according to a Reuters tally. More than 875,000 Americans have contracted COVID-19, and on average about 2,000 have died every day this month. The coronavirus’s U.S. death toll surged past 50,000, marking another grim milestone in the pandemic that has upended life around the globe. Three months after the nation’s first confirmed case, the highly contagious virus has killed at an alarming rate: Just 10 days ago, the number of recorded deaths stood at 25,000. Experts have warned that the number of reported fatalities probably underestimates the true toll of covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. Amid a national debate over how to count the dead, methods have varied widely from state to state. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention initially included only those who tested positive for the virus, even with strict limitations on testing.
The Washington Post has been analyzing data from state health agencies to track every known death in the country. Of the 50,024 fatalities confirmed as of Friday, 21,283 — or about 42 percent — occurred in New York. But while the state has started to see a decrease in its confirmed daily death counts, other parts of the country are beginning to see a surge. Even as governors in multiple states eased stay-at-home orders and took other steps to restart their stymied economies, the disease’s rapid spread in urban and rural areas had led to more than 28,000 deaths outside the hot spot of New York. The second-highest death toll was being carried by New Jersey, followed by Michigan, Massachusetts and Illinois. The novel coronavirus emerged in late December as a scattering of mysterious illnesses in Wuhan, China, with symptoms ranging from coughing and fever to cases of pneumonia, kidney failure and fluid buildup in the lungs. It soon traveled the globe, triggering school closures, lockdowns and unprecedented economic disruption. Worldwide as of Friday, more than 2.7 million people had been sickened with the virus and more than 195,000 had died, according to tracking by Johns Hopkins University.
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