US Coronavirus Cases Surpass 200,000 With More Than 4,600 Deaths−See Details

At a briefing on Wednesday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said his state has more than 83,000 cases of coronavirus.

The number of coronavirus cases in the United States surpassed 200,000 on Wednesday as officials warned spikes in confirmed cases may soon be seen outside of large city centres.

At his daily briefing on Wednesday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said his state accounted for more than 83,000 of the total coronavirus infections and 1,941 of the deaths. Neighbouring New Jersey was the second-hardest hit state, with more than 18,000 cases and 267 deaths.

In New York alone, currently the epicentre of US outbreak, 12,226 people remain hospitalised, an increase of 1,297 in the past 24 hours, more than 3,000 of them in intensive care. Cuomo stressed that more than 6,000 patients had been treated and released from hospitals in the state.

The data from the US, however, comes amid reports that China has underplayed the extent of the outbreak in that country, the origin of the coronavirus. Bloomberg News, citing White House sources, reported on Wednesday that US intelligence officials believe China has underreported both the number of cases and deaths from COVID-19, the disease associated with the coronavirus. The extent of the understatement was not disclosed.

Bloomberg said Chinese officials did not respond to requests for comment for the report.

At his briefing, Cuomo said only one county in the state of New York, in the rural north-central part of the state, had not reported cases of coronavirus, a trend that he said was a harbinger of what was coming to the rest of the US.

“Just the way it’s gone through rural New York, it will go through rural America,” Cuomo said. “To the extent people watch their nightly news in Kansas and say, ‘Well, this is a New York problem’, that’s not what these numbers say. It says it’s a New York problem today. Tomorrow, it’s a Kansas problem and a Texas problem and a New Mexico problem.”