WASHINGTON, May 6 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The US coronavirus death toll climbed by 2,333 in the past 24 hours, a tally by Johns Hopkins University showed Tuesday, more than twice as many as the day before.
The Baltimore-based university said as of 8:30 pm (0030 GMT Wednesday) that the country had suffered a total of 71,022 deaths.
On Monday, the United States recorded its lowest daily balance in a month, with 1,015 fatalities.
Despite more than a month of stay-at-home orders, the Washington region has become a coronavirus hotspot — and the African-American and Latino populations of the US capital have been particularly hard hit.
Washington and the neighboring states of Maryland and Virginia now have more than 50,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and there have been some 2,300 deaths.
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan predicted in early April that the area would see the next major outbreak and was about two weeks behind New York, the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States.
Despite the closure of schools and non-essential businesses and a lockdown since the end of March, the number of infections, hospitalizations and deaths has continued to rise in the region.
Montgomery County, to the north of the US capital, has about one million residents. As of Tuesday, it had 5,541 confirmed coronavirus cases and 292 deaths.
Maryland as a whole has reported around 26,400 cases and more than 1,300 deaths.
Many of the area’s essential workers are African-American or Hispanic, and their infection and death rates are considerably higher than those of the white population.
There have been more than 5,300 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Washington, which has a population of around 700,000, and 264 deaths.
African-Americans account for slightly less than half of the population of Washington — but 80 percent of the virus deaths.
“This virus has not left the District,” Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said Monday.
Several US states have already begun reopening despite not having met federal guidelines that call for a 14-day decline in the number of new virus cases before doing so.
Ralph Northam, the governor of Virginia, has said he may partially ease restrictions from May 15.
Virginia has reported around 19,500 COVID-19 cases and nearly 700 deaths. — NNN-AGENCIES
