The coronavirus pandemic has now resulted in 50,000 infections across the United States.
The daunting milestone was passed on Tuesday as the country grapples with an influx of cases and deaths in recent days. U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams warned a day prior that “this week, it’s going to get bad.”
Businesses and services across the country closed, and millions of people in a number of states have been ordered to stay at home as cases of the flu-like illness build each day. As of Tuesday afternoon, there were more than 50,200 confirmed infections and 606 deaths across America, according to the latest reading by the Johns Hopkins University tracker.
The quarantines and changes have resulted in a significant impact on the economy, with the stock market swinging wildly for weeks and declining since the pandemic began. President Trump on Tuesday said he hoped the country would begin returning to normal by Easter, despite healthcare experts being far less optimistic.
“I would love to have it opened by Easter,” Trump said. “It’s such an important day for other reasons, but I will make it an important day for this too. I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter.”
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New York has experienced a large share of the more than 50,000 cases, with the state alone seeing over 25,000 cases and 200 deaths. Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency for many more ventilators after the agency said it planned to send just 400, a number he deemed far too small.
“Four hundred ventilators? I need 30,000 ventilators,” he said. “You want a pat on the back for sending 400 ventilators? What are we going to do with 400 ventilators when we need 30,000 ventilators?”
Vice President Mike Pence, who was tasked with leading the White House’s coronavirus response team, announced that the government would be shipping 4,000 more ventilators to the state after Cuomo’s comments.
Worldwide, there have been more than 409,000 cases of the coronavirus, about 106,000 recoveries, and at least 18,246 deaths.
