Skip to main content

US coronavirus deaths surge past 2,000: Johns Hopkins

Deaths from the new coronavirus in the United States surged past 2,000 on Saturday, doubling in just three days, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

The number of deaths late Saturday was 2,010, about a quarter of them in New York City, the country’s hardest-hit region, Johns Hopkins reported.

Confirmed cases in the United States topped 121,000, according to the tally.

The surge came as President Donald Trump said he was considering a quarantine on the greater New York area to slow the disease’s move from the US epicenter.

New York has reported more than 52,000 cases, and 517 of the US deaths were in New York City.

“There’s a possibility that sometime today we’ll do a quarantine — short-term, two weeks — on New York, probably New Jersey, certain parts of Connecticut,” Trump said, adding that it was important to protect Florida, a favorite winter destination for people in the northeast.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo objected to the idea, which he said Trump had not discussed with him.

“If you said we’re geographically confining people, that would be a lockdown. Then we would be Wuhan, China, and that wouldn’t make sense,” Cuomo told CNN, referring to the city in central China where the virus outbreak began, which was almost totally isolated by Beijing. 

Cuomo said he did not believe such an act would be legal, and added: “Why you would want to just create total pandemonium on top of a pandemic, I have no idea.”



from SAMAA https://ift.tt/33UrGwS

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

IT ministry forms panel to review social media rules

ISLAMABAD: While uproar against the new rules to regulate social media continues from various segments of society, including parliamentarians, the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) and civil society, the information technology ministry on Friday formed a committee to review the rules. The federal cabinet approved the rules on Feb 11, but later after opposition from various quarters, including companies that manage different social media platforms, the prime minister announced that a fresh consultation process would be launched over the Citizens Protection (Against Online Harm) Rules 2020. The committee formed by the IT ministry is headed by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority Chairman Amir Azeem Bajwa while its members are Eazaz Aslam Dar, additional secretary of IT; Tania Aidrus, member of the Strategic Reforms Imple­mentation Unit, Prime Minister Office; and Dr Arslan Khalid, focal person on digital media at the PM Office. Federal Minister for Human Rights Dr Shireen Ma

Young girl’s tragic story makes her symbol of Yemen war

Buthaina Mansur al-Rimi’s life has changed drastically since last year — orphaned in Sanaa, the little girl controversially ended up in Saudi Arabia for medical care and has just returned to Yemen’s capital. Her entire immediate family was wiped out in an air strike by a Saudi-led coalition that backs Yemen’s government, using an explosive device Amnesty International says was made in the US. Images of Buthaina’s rescue and a picture of her swollen and bruised at a hospital trying to force open one of her eyes with her fingers were beamed worldwide. That international fame saw her become something of a propaganda pawn in the war between Yemen’s Iran-backed Huthi rebels and Saudi media. “I was in my mother’s room with my father, sisters, brother and uncle, the first missile hit, and my father went to get us sugar to get over the shock, but then the second missile hit, and then the third,” she says. “And then the house fell,” adds the little girl, who says she is eight. It was the