The US has around 15,000 more confirmed cases than the second country on the list, Italy
Washington:
The United States now has more than 100,000 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus, a tracker maintained by Johns Hopkins University showed on Friday.
There were 100,717 cases, including 1,544 deaths from 6 p.m. Eastern Time (2200 GMT).
By far the largest cluster is located in New York, where almost half of the cases occur and overwhelm the hospital system.
The United States has around 15,000 confirmed cases more than the second country on the list, Italy, and 20,000 more than China, where the disease was first identified, but has peaked since then.
The US mortality rate based on confirmed cases is around 1.5 percent, compared to around 10.5 percent in Italy.
This mortality rate could decrease as larger tests show more people who are positive but asymptomatic.
It can also increase when more cities and states are in a similar position to New York, where more than 500 people have died and there is a drastic shortage of hospital beds, personal protective equipment, and ventilators.
"We are still seeing an increasing number of cases, an increasing number of hospital stays, an increasing number of intensive care units, an increasing number of patients with mechanical ventilators," said Thomas Tsai, Professor of Health Policy at Harvard to AFP.
"And unfortunately, the mortality rate is likely to follow this pattern. It's just that it will be days or weeks ago."
(Except for the headline, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and published from a syndicated feed.)
