The United States counted its highest coronavirus-related death toll in a single day on Tuesday, with 1,997 fatalities, bringing the total to nearly 13,000 on Wednesday morning, according to the latest
figures in a New York Times database. The U.S. currently has at least 397,754 positive cases across every state, Washington, D.C. and four territories.
New York State continues to be the center of the outbreak, recording 805 deaths on Tuesday alone, according to The Times’s data. The state, with a population of nearly 20 million, now has more confirmed cases than Italy, a nation of 60 million that was the first in Europe to be ravaged by the disease.
And in New York City, where the total number of recorded fatalities surged to 4,009, the virus has claimed more lives than the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The total number of deaths does not account for the number of people who have died in their homes.
“The blunt truth is coronavirus is driving these very tragic deaths,” Mayor Bill de Blasio, speaking on CNN on Wednesday morning, said, referring to people dying at home. “We are talking about 100 to 200 people per day.”
The rising toll reflects the often considerable lag between the time people are infected and the day they die, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has said. He has also warned that the slowing rate of infections could quickly be reversed if people stopped following social distancing protocols.
Like Italy within Europe, New York has had the misfortune of being the first place in the United States where the virus deeply seeded itself in the population. But a New York Times investigation also found that early missteps, including delays in closing schools and failing to break the chain of transmission within households, have proved costly.