U.S. Surges Past China in COVID-19 Cases

As the coronavirus continues to spread across the United States, with New York and Louisiana hit particularly hard, the U.S. officially became the country with the most confirmed cases of COVID-19. As of Thursday, March 26, the number of cases had reached 83,836 according to the Johns Hopkins University, overtaking China which has a total of 81,782 cases.

As the following chart shows, it took the U.S. less than one month to go from 74 confirmed cases on March 1 to more than 80,000 on Thursday. While the steep increase in cases over the past few days can partly be attributed to extended testing capacities, it also illustrates the threat posed by a virus that’s spreading exponentially.

As of Thursday, New York City alone had more than 20,000 confirmed cases with the total for the state of New York approaching 40,000. So far, 385 people have died from COVID-19 in New York, compared to more than 1,200 across the United States.