America Now Has The Highest Number Of Coronavirus Cases In The World

America has overtaken China to have the highest number of coronavirus cases in the world.

While Covid-19 began in China, the superpower jumped on social distancing, quarantine and disinfection practices quickly. This led to the number of cases reaching a peak point before gradually declining.

China has officially recorded 81,285 cases of the virus, while the US has now reached more than 83,000.

Italy isn't close behind with 80,589 infections and Spain is racking up the number of patients with 56,197.

The World Health Organization has warned that America could become the epicentre of the virus pandemic.

WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris told a press conference that authorities are concerned at the rapid increase in the number of people with the virus.

"We are now seeing a very large acceleration in cases in the US. So it does have that potential," she said in relation to the US becoming the epicentre.

"We cannot say that is the case yet, but it does have that potential."

Previously, Europe had been declared as the epicentre due to the number of cases in Italy as well as Spain, Germany, France and Switzerland all having tens of thousands of cases.

Much of the US has been plunged into lockdown, with many non-essential services being ordered to close and citizens told to remain inside unless it's absolutely necessary.

Out of the 83,000 infections, 1,182 have died and only 1,864 have recovered, indicating a large number of the infections have occurred in the last two weeks.

But despite the number of infections rising at such a rapid rate, President Donald Trump is keen to get people back to work.

He has said he'd love for self-isolation rules to be weakened by Easter.

Mr Trump told a Fox News town hall: "I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter. You'll have packed churches all over our country. I think it would be a beautiful time.

"I would love to have that. It's such an important day for other reasons, but I'll make it an important day for this too."

His medical advisors haven't mentioned anything about the potential for opening the country back up.

Surgeon General Jerome Adams, who sits on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, said: "We will assess at the end of the 14 days and we'll figure out the most appropriate thing to do.

"Based on my experience, the president will make the appropriate decision based on all the data."

Featured Image Credit: PA

Topics: News, Coronavirus

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie is a Trending Journalist at LADbible. His first job was as a newsreader and journalist at the award winning Sydney radio station, Macquarie Radio. He was solely responsible for the content broadcast on multiple stations across Australia when the MH17, Germanwings and AirAsia disasters unfolded. Stewart has covered the conflict in Syria for LADbible, interviewing a doctor on the front line, and has contributed to the hugely successful UOKM8 campaign.

@stewartperrie