Simon Ateba is Chief White House Correspondent for Today News Africa covering President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, U.S. government, UN, IMF, World Bank and other financial and international institutions in Washington and New York.
Coronavirus has killed nearly 50,000 Americans with about 2000 deaths already recorded on Thursday. More 870,000 people have been infected nationwide.
According to the latest data collated by virus tracker website worldometers, 49,651 Americans had died from the virus as at 6 p.m. on Thursday April 23, 2020, while 876,174 people had been infected. At least 85,010 others had recovered.
The latest data shows that 2341 people died from the coronavirus in the United States on Wednesday alone while 29973 new cases were recorded.
The real numbers may be much higher because testing remains limited in the United States.
Data from Johns Hopkins University virus tracker show that about 4.5 million Americans have been tested for the coronavirus.
New York, the epicenter of the crisis in the United States, has tested more people than anywhere else in the country with over 669,982 tests, followed by California with more than 465,327 tests.
As President Trump and a handful of Republican governors plan to reopen the country to relaunch economic activity, health experts have warned that without a wide range testing system, there might likely be a more severe resurgence of the virus.