The country saw 602,989 infections with 25,575 deaths by 6:50 p.m. (2250 GMT), according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.
The hardest-hit state, New York, saw 202,630 infections and a death toll of 10,834, followed by New Jersey with 68,824 infections and 2,805 deaths. Other states with over 20,000 infections include Massachusetts, Michigan, Pennsylvania, California, Illinois and Louisiana.
Worldwide, the virus has infected more than 1.98 million people and killed at least 125,000.
PEAK ARRIVING?
"We might well be at a point in time when the number of new cases in the United States will be peaking, and beginning to decline in the country overall," said Robert Schooley, a professor of medicine at the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health at the University of California, San Diego.
"Having said that, there are still a number of cities and states in which cases are still rising quickly and will likely do so for several more weeks," Schooley told Xinhua. "These include places like Texas, Florida and Georgia whose governors were slow in introducing epidemic control measures."
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that there are "indications" that some of the metrics used to gauge the crisis "are starting to level off" in some areas.
According to the COVID-19 model projection done by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, the nation's deaths per day peaked on April 13 at 2,150, while COVID-19 patients per day peaked on April 10 with 56,831 beds needed on that single day.
"The data shows that the confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country doubled every two to three days in late March. And now the doubling time extended to every 10 days. It reveals that the growth rate started to decline, and the social distancing measures have achieved good results," Zhang Zuofeng, a professor of epidemiology, who is also the associate dean for research at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Xinhua.
Considering hospitalization rates, intensive care unit treatment rates and death rates as the "most reliable indicators" in the course of the epidemic in a given location, Schooley said that these numbers seem to be peaking in hot spots like New York, and hopefully they now start dropping rapidly.
President Donald Trump announced in late March that the national social distancing guidelines aimed at slowing the spread of COVID-19 will be extended to April 30, changing his plan to reopen the country by Easter, which fell on April 12.
REOPENING ECONOMY?
However, pressure is mounting for the White House to reopen the U.S. economy as a staggering 16.8 million Americans have filed initial jobless claims in a three-week period ending April 4th.
During Tuesday's briefing on the epidemic in the White House, Trump said that he intended to talk with all 50 governors this week, probably on Thursday, to discuss a national plan for reopening the country.
Trump said that he might try to authorize reopening some states before May 1, within the federally recommended time horizon for social distancing and other mitigation measures.
Groups of big East Coast and West Coast states announced on Monday they would decide by regional consensus about how to approach their strategies for normalcy given how closely they are connected by metropolitan areas, transit and interdependent economies.
Fauci, the country's leading expert on infectious disease, is among the experts who have warned that the United States is not ready to restart its economy.
"We have to have something in place that is efficient and that we can rely on, and we're not there yet," Fauci told the media.
"We will have to continue the distancing policies in places where the epidemic may be peaking as we prepare for new surges in which distancing was late. We are, unfortunately, far from out of danger," Schooley said.
Zhang said that the ideal condition for reopening business in a state is that there are no new confirmed cases for 14 consecutive days. However, no state can meet the criterion by May 1, he added.
It is unlikely to have full reopening of business nationwide by May 1, but it is feasible to first reopen some states which were not heavily hit and some industries such as medical supplies and protective equipment, Zhang said.
WORST RECESSION
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Tuesday the global economy is on track to contract "sharply" by 3 percent in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the "worst recession" since the Great Depression in the 1930s.
"This is a downgrade of 6.3 percentage points from January 2020, a major revision over a very short period," IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath said at a virtual press conference on the latest World Economic Outlook report released Tuesday.
The report showed that advanced economies will contract significantly by 6.1 percent in 2020, and emerging markets and developing economies, which typically have growth levels well above advanced economies, will shrink by 1.0 percent.
The U.S. economy is expected to contract by 5.9 percent this year, and the euro area will see a decline of 7.5 percent, said the report. Japan's economic output will shrink by 5.2 percent, and Britain's will fall by 6.5 percent.
"The report emphasizes the unprecedented scale of the crisis," Jeffrey Sachs, a renowned professor of economics at Columbia University and a senior UN advisor, told Xinhua via email.
"The IMF predicts a kind of V-shaped recovery, down sharply in 2020, up not quite so sharply in 2021," Sachs said. "But we might not get such a quick bounce-back because the virus will continue to disrupt public health and therefore the world economy for years to come."
The IMF reiterated that it's actively deploying 1-trillion-U.S.-dollar lending capacity to support vulnerable countries, including through rapid-disbursing emergency financing and debt service relief to the poorest member countries, calling on official bilateral creditors to do the same.
HALT FUNDING?
As COVID-19 continues to take a toll globally, the Trump administration is halting the nation's funding to the World Health Organization (WHO), a move experts have warned against.
A review is being conducted to assess the WHO's role in addressing the spread of the coronavirus, Trump said at Tuesday's briefing.
The remarks came as Trump is aggressively defending his own handling of the outbreak in the country after his administration has been scrutinized for downplaying the threat from the coronavirus early on and faulted for delays in testing.
The tone also differed from one of his tweets on Feb. 24, several days before the United States reported its first death from COVID-19.
"The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA," Trump wrote at that time. "We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart."
Lawrence Gostin, director of the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, called cutting funding to the WHO during a global health crisis "disgraceful," warning that it would cause death and even blow back on the United States.
"How shortsighted when global coop needed more now than ever," Gostin said in a series of tweets on Tuesday.
In remarks delivered last week, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, "We must quarantine politicizing this virus at national and global levels."
"We have to work together, and we have no time to waste," he stressed.
Latest comments