U.S. COVID-19 deaths pass 4,000 – Johns Hopkins University

 The death toll from COVID-19 in the United States reached 4,079 early Wednesday, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

As of Wednesday morning, the United States, which is leading the world in terms of confirmed cases, has reported 189,510 infections, showed the tally updated by the university’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.

New York State, the epicenter of the nation’s outbreak, has recorded more than 75,833 cases and 1,714 deaths, both the most among U.S. states and territories.

Health experts on the White House Coronavirus Task Force said Tuesday that even with the Trump administration’s national social distancing guidelines in place, Americans still should be prepared for the prospect of the coronavirus causing 100,000 to 240,000 deaths in the country.

At a White House press briefing, Deborah Birx, the task force’s response coordinator, said as many as 1.5 million to 2.2 million people will succumb to COVID-19 if no mitigation measures whatsoever are taken to contain the virus.

“There’s no magic bullet, there’s no magic vaccine or therapy. It’s just behaviors,” Birx said, urging people to act according to the administration’s social distancing strategy, which has been extended to April 30. Those behaviors, Birx added, could change “the course of the viral pandemic.”

During the briefing, U.S. President Donald Trump warned:

“we’re going to go through a very tough two weeks.”

“And then hopefully, as the experts are predicting, as I think a lot of us are predicting, after having studied it so hard, we’re going to start seeing some real light at the end of the tunnel, but this is going to be a very painful, very, very painful two weeks,” Trump added.