New York: The number of COVID-19 deaths in the US topped 40,000 by Sunday noon, reaching 40,585, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.
A total of 742,442 cases have been reported in the country, according to the CSSE, Xinhua news agency reported. The state of New York suffered the most deaths at 18,921 among 242,570 cases, with 14,451 deaths from New York City.
In other hardest-hit states, New Jersey reported 4,364 fatalities, Michigan reported 2,308 deaths and Massachusetts recorded 1,560 deaths, the data showed.
France reported 395 deaths from COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, the government said, bringing the epidemic tally to 19,718. But in a positive sign, the number of people in hospital declined for the fifth day in a row to 30,610 — a small decline of 29, top health official Jerome Salomon told a televised press conference.
There were 5,744 people in intensive care, added Salomon, 89 fewer in the 11th consecutive day of decline. We are scoring points against the epidemic, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe told the same briefing, adding “the situation is improving gradually, slowly, but surely’ and the epidemic is slowing”.
Deaths from the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy rose by 433 on Sunday, the lowest daily tally in a week, and the number of new cases also slowed to 3,047 from a previous 3,491, the Civil Protection Agency said. The death toll had risen by 482 on Saturday, down from 575 on Friday.
The daily tallies of deaths and cases extend the broadly stable situation in place over the last two weeks. This plateau is down considerably from peaks reached around the end of March, but the downtrend has not proceeded as fast as was hoped in a country that has been in lockdown for almost six weeks.
Sunday’s number of deaths marked the lowest daily rise since 12 April, when it came in at 431, before rising again during the week.