8/17/20
The Covid-19 death toll in the United States has soared to more than 170,000, just 18 days after the nation marked 150,000 lives lost. As cases have increased in the US, the lull between grim milestones has grown shorter. It took 54 days for the number of people killed by the virus to go from one to 50,000, and then 34 days to cross 100,000 mark on May 27. Now, more than 5.4 million people have been infected and 170,052 have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. By September 5, the number of deaths could grow to 189,000, according to a projection from an ensemble forecast by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 1,000 coronavirus deaths have been reported nearly every day this month. While older Americans are more at risk for severe illness from coronavirus, health experts and officials are continuing to warn that younger populations are at the forefront of its spread. Also steadily increasing is the number of cases among children, according to CDC guidance. Early data led many experts to believe that children did not contract or spread the virus in the same way that adults do. But as more research has been done into their age group, that belief is changing, the CDC said.
Cases have also cropped up at colleges and universities as students return to campus. Oklahoma State University announced Sunday that at least 23 sorority members in an off-campus house tested positive for the virus. Less than a week after starting classes, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill announced its fourth cluster of coronavirus on Sunday. The clusters were located at two residence halls, a private apartment complex that serves students and the Sigma Nu fraternity. Health officials are hopeful that a new saliva test could give Americans a fast and inexpensive way to learn if they have Covid-19 and help to prevent increasing spread. The SalivaDirect test, from researchers at the Yale School of Public Health, received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration on Saturday. The test comes as frustration grows over testing delays and shortages. Seventeen states are performing fewer tests this past week compared with the previous week, according to the Covid Tracking Project. But while testing has gone down in those states, test positivity rates have increased in 34 states.
