More than 100 people living in the United States lost their lives on Monday after contracting the coronavirus.
On Monday, the single-day death toll passed 100 for the first time in the U.S. According to data from Johns Hopkins University, nearly 600 people in the U.S. have died after being diagnosed with COVID-19 as of Tuesday morning.
While the virus hit the West Coast first, New York has since become the epicenter of the disease in the U.S. More than 21,000 people have tested positive for the coronavirus in the state, and 157 have died from the illness. The neighboring state of New Jersey has the second-largest outbreak with more than 2,800 cases and 27 deaths.
In a press conference on Monday, Dr. Deborah Birx, a top doctor on the White House coronavirus task force, said the virus was likely circulating in New York City for weeks before it was widely noticed.
“The New York metro area of New Jersey, New York City, and parts of Long Island have an attack rate close to one in 1,000,” Birx said. “This is five times what the other areas are seeing. And through the lab investigations, we are finding 28% of submitted specimens are positive from that area, where it’s less than 8% in the rest of the country.”
As a whole, the U.S. has 46.450 cases of the coronavirus. Globally, there are more than 387,000 COVID-19 cases and 16,767 reported deaths. Nearly 102,000 people worldwide have recovered since contracting the virus.
