New Delhi: US President-elect Joe Biden has clearly stated that he won’t order a nationwide lockdown to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus in the country.
“There’s no circumstance which I can see that would require total national shutdown. I think that would be counterproductive,” news agency AFP quoted the president-elect as saying.
The US has the world’s highest caseload and death toll—250,483 and 11,525,149, respectively, accounting for more than 18 percent of the global deaths.
The situation is only going to get worse, Dr Jonathan Reiner, a professor at George Washington University School of Medicine warned, amidst the continued obstruction from the Trump administration for a smooth handover to the incoming administration of US President-elect Joe Biden.
“The horrible death count reflects the number of people who were being infected three weeks ago — two to three weeks ago, because that’s the lag,” Reiner stated couple of days ago.
“On average, two to three weeks ago, we were seeing 70,000 to 80,000 (new) cases per day. Yesterday, there were about 155,000 (new) cases. So if you’re alarmed at the 1,700 deaths today, two to three weeks from now, we’re going to see 3,000 deaths a day,” Reiner added.
New York state reported the highest number of fatalities at 34,173, followed by Texas in the second place with 20,147 deaths.
The country reached the grim milestone of 200,000 coronavirus deaths on September 22 and the number climbed to a quarter of a million in nearly two months.
Meanwhile, in a bid to break the chain of transmission, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised citizens to not travel during the Thanksgiving holiday. Notably, Thanksgiving and Christmas are said to be the busiest time for domestic travel across the country.