United States Passes China With Over 82,000 Covid-19 Cases 

The United States passed a grim milestone on Thursday, officially surpassing China to become the nation that has the highest recorded number of cases of Covid-19 (according to official statistics, per data available at https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus. China, of course, has greatly slowed the spread of the virus through strict quarantines, and is reportedly planning on lifting those measures in April now that the community spread has been contained.

All told, the tracking indicates that the U.S. has 82,179 confirmed cases as of about 6 p.m. Thursday, with China holding at just over 81,000. Italy is just behind China and likely to pass them soon at 80,589, with over 6,200 cases reported Thursday.

But, it should be mentioned that the cases broken down by actual population numbers remains low in the United States, which is possibly why President Donald Trump continues to support the idea that the country can be back to some form of ‘business as usual’ by Easter – April 12^th. He has floated the idea that Democrats are hoping to keep things shut down longer primarily to harm the economy and deflate his chances at being re-elected rather than for reasons of public health.

“I think there are certain people that would like it not to open so quickly,” Trump said Wednesday. “I think there are certain people that would like [the economy] to do financially poorly, because they think that would be very good as far as defeating me at the polls.”

In terms of known infections per 1,000 people, the United States is actually on the lower end of the spectrum worldwide, despite the high raw number spread out over its population of over 330 million. New York, which is being slammed by new cases daily, has 1.9 cases per 1,000 residents – which is above hard-hit Italy (1.3) and Spain (1.2). But the rest of the country is far behind to this point, with more and more states embracing shelter in place requirements to slow the spread.

New Jersey (.75) is the closest to New York, both geographically and in terms of known infection rate, but no other state is currently above 0.5 cases per 1,000 residents. Only nine states and the District of Colombia are at or above 0.2/1,000 residents. So while the raw numbers look overwhelming, it is still important to understand the infection rate within appropriate population context.

The full rundown of state-by-state Covid-19 infection rates is included below – all stats as of 6PM Thursday on https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus.

State-By-State Covid-19 Known Cases

*per 1,000 residents as of 6:42 PM 3/26