NEW YORK: The world marked a grim milestone on Thursday, registering more than 1 million confirmed cases of the deadly coronavirus that has swept the globe in less than five months.
That’s because the number of official cases, compiled by Johns Hopkins’ Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases website, are only those identified through testing. Cases not tested would include asymptomatic individuals; people who may have died of complications of the virus without anyone knowing it; and those whose symptoms were not serious enough to qualify for testing.
“The million (cases) is clearly way under what the actual number will be because of all the issues of testing and all the people with mild symptoms that haven’t been tested,” said Dr. Steven Corwin, president, and CEO of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.
He said the U.S. figures are especially underreported “because of the lag that we had getting testing underway and the ability to only test the sickest of patients to begin with.”
The U.S., with more than 236,000 cases as of Thursday, tops the list of countries with the most infections, followed by Italy and Spain with just over 110,000 each. China has fallen to fourth, with just under 82,500 cases, according to Johns Hopkins COVID-19 case tracking system.
