More than 9 out of every 10 Americans will be under orders to stay at home over coronavirus concerns by Friday.
About 305 million people in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico are under some sort of shelter-in-place order or are being told to stay in their residences except for nonessential activities, according to a count by the Washington Examiner using data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Texas was included in the count despite there being some confusion about Gov. Greg Abbott’s Tuesday executive order. He has since clarified that the directive “requires all Texans to stay at home.”
The count also includes those living in municipalities that have issued similar orders within states that have not. Alabama, South Carolina, Missouri, Oklahoma, Wyoming, and Utah all have cities or counties that have issued stay-at-home orders, but have not done so statewide.
Iowa, Arkansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota have not mandated that residents stay in their homes during the pandemic, nor have any municipalities within them, despite pressure on some to do so.
In total, approximately 92.8% of the country will be expected to stay home by the coming weekend amid warnings from President Trump and experts on the White House Coronavirus Task Force that the worst of the pandemic is yet to come.
“I want every American to be prepared for the hard days that lie ahead. We’re going to go through a very tough two weeks,” Trump said at a Tuesday White House news conference.
The United States has had more than 226,000 cases of the coronavirus and at least 5,316 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker. So far, the country has seen over 8,800 coronavirus patients recover.
