The United States has diagnosed 22,000 cases of coronavirus as hospitals in New York begin to buckle under the strain of treating sufferers.
America hit the grim tally on Saturday morning, with diagnoses more than doubling in two days. It was confirmed as New York diagnoses 3,000 new cases over night, bringing the total number of diagnoses in the Empire State to 10,000.
The number of coronavirus suffers has soared at an alarming rate, with the United States having just 101 coronavirus diagnoses on March 1 this year. New York has been hardest hit by Covid-19, the name of the new coronavirus strain, with 8, 515 cases and 56 deaths.
Over 5,000 of those cases are in New York City itself, with America’s most populous city bracing itself for a further explosion in the number of people diagnosed and killed by Covid-19. Two people an hour died of the disease in New York City on Friday between 10pm and 6pm.
President Trump has declared the state of New York a major disaster area, with troops now on the streets to help increase hospital capacity. One hospital in the Bronx is running low on ventilators – used to help patients whose lungs have been attacked by Covid-19 breathe – while an elderly woman suffering coronavirus died on the floor of a hospital in Queens.
Washington state is in second place, with 1,524 diagnoses and 83 deaths. And California has the third most Covid-19 cases in the US, with 1,255 cases and 24 deaths. Diagnoses in New York soared after Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered widespread testing in a bid to establish just how bad the outbreak was, and to give officials a better idea of how to contain it.
Donald Trump has declared the entire state a major disaster area, with the US Army now poised to move in to help maintain order, and take over empty hotels and college dorm rooms to turn them into makeshift hospitals.
He has also dispatched US Navy medical ship the Comfort to New York to provide futher capacity to treat patients, amid fears the city could run out of ventilators by the end of the month, and be forced to leave thousands of vulnerable patients to die.