6,002,615 coronavirus cases have been confirmed today, among them 183 thousand deaths. The US only passed the five million mark at the beginning of August, making the development quite a spike.
The surge in the number of cases can be largely attributed to lockdown measures being lifted almost countrywide, in hopes of boosting the economy.
The World Health Organization’s director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has called opening up without viral control precautions a “recipe for disaster. We want to see children returning to school and people returning to work places, but we want to see it done safely,” Tedros said at a news conference, the same day the US statistics became known.
USA has become the worst hit country since late March, when it statistically overtook COVID-19’s ground zero – China.
“No country can just pretend the pandemic is over,” was another point made by Tedros. At the same time, speakers during the recent Republican National Convention, like Donald Trump’s economic advisor Larry Kudlow, appeared to have said that the crisis has already been overcome, urging people to return to their workplaces.
