Number of virus cases crosses 6 million in US
- 31 Aug 2020
The United States on Monday passed six million coronavirus cases, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University, adding a million new infections in less than a month.
The country remains by far the most impacted in the world by the pandemic in absolute terms, with nearly a quarter of global infections and 183,203 deaths from COVID-19, the Baltimore-based university’s tracker showed.
The number of new daily cases has declined in recent weeks, but the virus is far from disappearing in the US — despite President Donald Trump’s repeated assertion that it will — and the national average hides huge regional disparities.
Trump, whose re-election bid has been hit by the economic impact of lockdown restrictions, has promised a complete victory over the pandemic, and a readily-available vaccine by the end of the year.
The US charted its five millionth case on Aug.9. That was just 17 days after it hit four million.
Global coronavirus infections have soared past 25 million, as countries tightened restrictions to halt the health crisis that has upended life for most of humanity.
A million additional cases have been detected globally roughly every four days since mid-July, according to an AFP tally, with India on Sunday setting the record for the highest single-day rise in cases with 78,761
As the COVID-19 pandemic froze the United States economy, not all Latin American immigrants living there were affected equally, a look at the money they sent back to their birthplaces reveals.
While remittances for the first six months of 2020 were lower than the same period in 2019 for Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, they were up for Mexico and the Dominican Republic, according to an analysis of central bank data by the Washington-based Pew Research Centre published on Monday.
The six nations included in the analysis are the birthplaces of about eight of 10 Latino immigrants living in the United States and receive the vast majority of their remittances from the US. All six countries had set record highs for the money they sent home in 2019, receiving $71.5 billion, according to the report.
Mexico stands out for recording a 10.6% increase in the money it received during the first six months of the year, despite the pandemic. At the other end of the spectrum is El Salvador, which received 8% less.
Agencies
