More Than 9,000 Victims in America: The Worst Is yet to Come!

The new Coronavirus continued its outbreak in the United States, recording 323,516 infections and 9,171 deaths, mostly in New York State, at a time when the US administration is still grappling with the crisis.

While the state of New York, in particular, suffers from a lack of personal protective materials and respirators, as well as medical workers, the authorities issued an urgent appeal to volunteers to join the epidemic effort, with 4,159 deaths and 122,031 injuries recorded. But according to Governor Andrew Como, "The worst is yet to come." He pointed out that the number of injuries in the state could reach its peak, within four to 14 days, warning that hospitals operating over capacity are not ready yet to face this possibility.

The state of New York recorded, yesterday, the record number of 630 deaths, within 24 hours, in addition to more than 594, yesterday. As for New York City alone, it has recorded more than 63 thousand cases and 2,624 deaths since the virus began spreading.

President Donald Trump announced that a thousand soldiers, the majority of whom are doctors and nurses, will be deployed in the city "to provide assistance in places where it is most needed", while some 85,000 volunteers - including 22,000 from outside the state - have applied for relief efforts. However, Mayor Bill de Plazio expected that the city would need 45,000 people to fight the epidemic between April and May. This prompted Como to announce that he would sign an executive order allowing medical students scheduled to graduate this spring to start working now. He warned that infection in counties in the Long Island area bordering the city "is spreading like fire", especially since the densely populated region has 22 percent of patients receiving treatment at state-level hospitals. The number of casualties has increased steadily in the past ten days, and cases are being detected in places far from the city.

On the other hand, New York State continues efforts to search for respirators, and Como thanked the Chinese government for donating 1,000 of these devices, while only 2,500 respirators came from a separate order for 17,000 devices from China.

Meanwhile, differences arose within the Trump administration, on the one hand, over the need to tighten safeguards. While health professionals and some conservatives are pushing for a more aggressive and unified national approach to the virus, Trump continues to shift the blame to the states for not being prepared to deal with the epidemic. Some of the president's health advisors have argued, in recent days, that restrictions on social interaction and economic activity, which have closed most parts of the country, should be expanded to include the 50 states, and that more Americans need to adopt them. But Trump continued to assert that the crisis was, in general, limited to hotspots, such as New York, California and Michigan, and did not support the country's closure.

In the same vein, it has become clear that the US administration is divided over whether to ask people to use masks to limit the spread of the epidemic. This was evident at Trump's press conference, Friday, when he stated that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention urges all Americans to wear a protective mask when they leave their homes. A statement that was soon rejected by him, in the conference itself, when he put this recommendation in the field of voluntary choice, stressing that he will not wear one. Despite the simplicity of such a procedure, the discussion about it reflects the confusion that has led to delaying dealing with the Corona epidemic since the virus began spreading in the United States.

At the same press conference, Trump returned to his habit of insulting reporters, clashed with members of his administration, and regained his confrontational rhetoric, after several days in which he seemed to understand the effects of the virus that could kill hundreds of thousands. The US president again rejected the recommendation of Anthony Fuchi, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to issue a national order to stay at home, and said he would leave such requests to rulers. But he indicated that the federal government would pay hospitals to treat Corona patients.

For days, senior officials of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention had been pushing the president to advise everyone - even people who looked healthy - to wear a mask or cover that covered their mouths and noses in public places. This issue became more urgent, after the director of the center, Robert Redfield, stated that up to a quarter of the injured may have no symptoms and contribute significantly to the transmission of the infection.