Black Americans more likely to die from COVID-19: US Data

–Preliminary data highlights inequalities in health and access to medical care

–US suffers record deaths, and small businesses struggle to secure loans

NEW YORK: Preliminary data from the United States indicates that black (African) Americans are more likely to die from the coronavirus – highlighting the inequalities in health and access to medical care.

Democrats seek to double the White House’s latest request for emergency funding. New York State now has more confirmed cases than Italy. John Prine, the country-folk singer, died in Tennessee.

The United States counted its highest coronavirus-related death toll in a single day on Tuesday, with 1,997 fatalities, bringing the total to nearly 13,000 on Wednesday morning, according to the latest figures in a New York Times database. The US currently has at least 397,754 positive cases across every state, Washington, D.C. and four territories.

New York State continues to be the center of the outbreak, recording 805 deaths on Tuesday alone, according to The Times’s data. The state, with a population of nearly 20 million, now has more confirmed cases than Italy, a nation of 60 million that was the first in Europe to be ravaged by the disease.

And in New York City, where the total number of recorded fatalities surged to 4,009, the virus has claimed more lives than the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The total number of deaths does not account for the number of people who have died in their homes.

“The blunt truth is coronavirus is driving these very tragic deaths,” Mayor Bill de Blasio, speaking on CNN on Wednesday morning, said, referring to people dying at home. “We are talking about 100 to 200 people per day.”

The rising toll reflects the often considerable lag between the time people are infected and the day they die, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has said. He has also warned that the slowing rate of infections could quickly be reversed if people stopped following social distancing protocols.

Like Italy within Europe, New York has had the misfortune of being the first place in the United States where the virus deeply seeded itself in the population. But a New York Times investigation also found that early missteps, including delays in closing schools and failing to break the chain of transmission within households, have proved costly.

Mr. Trump also accused the World Health Organization of not being aggressive enough in confronting the dangers from the virus — the very criticism that has been leveled at his administration.

He threatened to cut off funding for the organization even as the virus continues to haunt the world. With the health care systems of wealthy nations stretched to the breaking point when confronted by an outbreak, there is growing concern about the damage the virus could inflict on poorer countries.

Those same strains have become painfully clear across America, where entrenched inequalities in income and access to health care have been evident in the disproportionately high rates of infection and death among black people.

Cyber criminals are increasingly exploiting the pandemic by impersonating the W.H.O. and sending emails containing malware to unassuming people and groups, according to a joint alert on Wednesday from cyber agencies in the United States and the United Kingdom.

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