WASHINGTON: The United States recorded 1,237 coronavirus deaths in the past 24 hours, bringing its grim total to 88,730, according to the latest real-time tally Saturday reported by Johns Hopkins University.
The country — hardest hit by the pandemic in terms of the number of fatalities — has now confirmed a total of 1,466,682 cases, the Baltimore-based school reported.
The global total for confirmed COVID-19 infections was at 4,716,932 as of Saturday night, while the death toll rose to 312,902.
Behind the US were Russia and Britain, with Brazil overtaking Italy and Spain and rising to fourth place after registering more than 14,000 new cases in just 24 hours.
As the US continued to take the dubious distinction as coronavirus topnotcher, former President Barack Obama on Saturday criticized US leaders overseeing the nation’s response to the pandemic, telling college graduates in an online commencement address that the emergency shows many officials “aren’t even pretending to be in charge.”
Obama spoke on “Show Me Your Walk, HBCU Edition,” a two-hour event for students graduating from historically black colleges and universities broadcast on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. His remarks were unexpectedly political, given the venue, and touched on current events beyond the virus and its social and economic impacts.
“More than anything, this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing,” Obama said. “A lot them aren’t even pretending to be in charge.”
Obama did not name President Donald Trump or any other federal or state officials in his comments. But last Friday, he harshly criticized Trump’s handling of the pandemic as an “absolute chaotic disaster” in a call with 3,000 members of his administrations obtained by Yahoo News.
The commencement remarks were the latest sign that Obama intends to play an increasingly active role in the coming election. He has generally kept a low profile in the years since he left office, even as Trump has disparaged him. Obama told supporters on the call that he would be “spending as much time as necessary and campaigning as hard as I can” for Joe Biden, who served as his vice president.
Former US President Barack Obama delivers a commencement address to students from historically black colleges and universities during the "Show Me Your Walk HBCU Edition" virtual graduation ceremony on May 16, 2020. (YouTube/Chase via REUTERS)
As he congratulated the graduates Saturday and commiserated over the enormous challenges they face given the devastation and economic turmoil the virus has wrought, the former president noted the February shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery, 25, who was killed while jogging on a residential street in Georgia.
“Let’s be honest: A disease like this just spotlights the underlying inequalities and extra burdens that black communities have historically had to deal with in this country,” Obama said. “We see it in the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on our communities, just as we see it when a black man goes for a jog and some folks feel like they can stop and question and shoot him if he doesn’t submit to their questioning.”
“Injustice like this isn’t new,” Obama went on to say. “What is new is that so much of your generation has woken up to the fact that the status quo needs fixing, that the old ways of doing things don’t work.” In the face of a void in leadership, he said, it would be up to the graduates to shape the future.
“If the world’s going to get better, it’s going to be up to you,” he said.
It is a perilous time for the nation’s historically black colleges and universities, which have long struggled with less funding and smaller endowments than their predominantly white peers and are now dealing with the financial challenges of the coronavirus. Even at the better-endowed HBCUs, officials are bracing for a tough few years.
Obama will also deliver a televised prime-time commencement address later Saturday for the high school Class of 2020 during an hour-long event with LeBron James, Malala Yousafzai and Ben Platt, among others.
'New normal" defiers blamed
In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo said the state’s new confirmed COVID-19 cases are predominantly coming from people who left their homes to shop, exercise or socialize, rather than from essential workers.
“That person got infected and went to the hospital or that person got infected and went home and infected the other people at home,” Cuomo said during his daily news conference on the coronavirus outbreak.
State data showed the number of new cases statewide has fluctuated between 2,100 and 2,500 per day. On Saturday, the number of new cases decreased to 2,419, from 2,762 on Friday.
Cuomo said while last week he had theorized that new cases were coming from essential workers, “that was exactly wrong.
“The infection rate among essential workers is lower than the general population and those new cases are coming predominantly from people who are not working and they are at home,” he said.
The state’s budget director, Robert Mujica, said officials expect to learn a lot more about the genesis of new cases from contact tracing over the next week.
Cuomo has said that New York was hiring thousands of workers to trace the contacts of people who test positive for the coronavirus. Health experts say contact tracing is critical to isolating potentially contagious people in order to limit further outbreaks.
Cuomo said the five regions of the state that were allowed on Friday to reopen for business — out of 10 total regions — were required to have a certain number of tracers proportionate to their populations.
“The tracing operation is tremendously large and challenging,” he said.
New York state, home to both bustling Manhattan and hilly woods and farmland that stretch hundreds of miles north to the Canadian border, has been the global epicenter of the pandemic, but rural areas have not been nearly as badly affected as New York City, the country’s biggest city at roughly 8.4 million people.
Driven by the impact in New York City, the state has accounted for more than one-third of the nearly 80,000 American who have died from COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, according to a Reuters tally.
Statewide, the outbreak is ebbing, with coronavirus hospitalizations falling to 6,220, more than a third of the level at the peak one month ago, state data showed.
In the five regions where restrictions were eased on Friday, in central and upstate New York, construction and manufacturing work was allowed to resume, and retail businesses offering curbside pickup or in-store pickup for orders placed ahead were allowed to reopen. A broader pause on activity in New York City and elsewhere was extended until at least May 28.
New York, along with the nearby states of New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware, will partially reopen beaches for the Memorial Day holiday weekend on May 23-25, Cuomo has said.
New York’s Watkins Glen International auto race circuit and several horse racing tracks in the state can reopen without fans from June 1, the governor said on Saturday.
Cuomo warned that with an increase in economic activity, New Yorkers should expect an increase in coronavirus cases.
“We don’t want to see a spike,” he said. “It depends on how people react and it depends on their personal behavior.”
