COVID-19 all-in-one update

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(NEW YORK) — Here’s the latest information on the COVID-19 coronavirus as of 9:15 a.m. ET.

Latest reported numbers globally per Johns Hopkins University
Global diagnosed cases: 6,535,019
Global deaths: 386,464.  The United States has the most deaths of any single country, with 107,175.
Number of countries/regions: at least 188
Total patients recovered globally: 2,824,722

Latest reported numbers in the United States per Johns Hopkins University
There are at least 1,851,520 diagnosed cases in 50 states + the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam.  This is more than in any other country.
U.S. deaths: at least 107,175.  New York State has the greatest number of reported deaths in the U.S., with 30,019.
U.S. total patients recovered: 479,258
U.S. total people tested: 18,214,950

The greatest number of reported COVID-19 cases in the U.S. is in New York, with 374,085 confirmed cases out of a total state population of 19.5 million.  That is the most reported cases than in any other single region in the world.  Moscow, Russia is next, with 189,214 reported cases out of a total population of at least 12.5 million.

Latest reported deaths per state
Visit https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html for the latest numbers.

School closures
For a state-by-state interactive map of current school closures, please visit the Education Week website, where numbers are updated once daily.

There are 98,277 public schools and 34,576 private schools in the U.S., according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Those schools educate almost 50.8 million public school students and 5.8 million private school students.

The latest headlines
Expert warns US could see up to 400,000 COVID-19 deaths by spring 2021
The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 stands at just over 107,000 as of Thursday morning, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.  But that number could be four times higher by this time next year, says Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute.  “All of the best models suggest that another 100,000 will die over the next three to four months if we continue to have 1,000 deaths a day,” Dr. Jha said during an online forum Wednesday, sponsored by the government’s Pandemic Response Accountability Committee.  “It is entirely possible that by next spring, by the time we might get a vaccine, 300,000 [to] 400,000 Americans will have died from this disease,” Jha said, citing the national lifting of lockdowns, increasing civil unrest, and a lack of testing as primary drivers of increasing infections, which he also called “wholly preventable” with proper attention.

An additional 1.87 million Americans apply for unemployment
A further 1,877,000 Americans applied for unemployment in the week ending May 30, according to data released Thursday morning by the U.S. Department of Labor.  That number is down by 249,000 from the number of reported unemployment applications the week before, which were themselves revised up by 3,000.  The new numbers bring to roughly 42 million the number of Americans who have applied for unemployment in the 11 weeks since nationwide lockdowns began in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in shuttered businesses and widespread layoffs.  The good news, modest though it is, is that unemployment applications continue to trend lower.  Some 14.8% of Americans are now unemployed as of the week ending May 23.  However, when complete numbers for the month of May are released Friday, that percentage is expected to rise to at least 20%, which would be the highest unemployment rate in the U.S. since the Great Depression.

Another study finds hydroxychloroquine ineffective in treating COVID-19
The results of a new study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, finds hydroxychloroquine was in effective in treating people infected with COVID-19.  Hydroxychloroquine is widely prescribed to treat malaria, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis but received widespread attention in part after President Trump repeatedly touted it as a drug that can both treat and prevent COVID-19, despite no solid evidence to support those claims.  The NEJM study, said to be the first double-blind randomized, placebo-controlled trial of hydroxychloroquine, found otherwise, concluded the drug “did not prevent illness compatible with Covid-19 or confirmed infection.  Other studies of the drug have reached the same or similar conclusions, while additional studies are ongoing.  The British medical journal Lancet reported last month that subjects taking hydroxychloroquine also demonstrated a higher risk of death and heart problems.

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