Corona cases approach 1 million worldwide with over 47,300 deaths

Real figures are believed to be much higher due to shortages in testing.

By David Isaac, World Israel News

As of Thursday morning, 938,887 people worldwide have been infected and 47,303 have died from the coronavirus, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University. That number continues to climb.

As of April 1, 75,811 new cases were reported worldwide. Though the real figures are believed to be much higher because of testing shortages, differences in counting the dead and large numbers of mild cases that have gone unreported.

Even China took a step back, reimposing a lockdown on one county after a flare-up of the virus was reported. Bloomberg reports that on Wednesday, Jia county with a population of 640,000 sealed off all residential compounds and asked people “visiting and leaving homes to produce identity cards, wear masks and submit to temperature checks.”

The virus began in Hubei province’s capital of Wuhan. China instituted an aggressive lockdown. The lockdown was lifted in Hubei on March 25, though it won’t be fully lifted in Wuhan until April 8, barring a sudden spike in the disease. More than 2,500 people died in the city of 8 million though residents question the accuracy of the official numbers.

Officially, 3,270 died in China. That number was surpassed this week by the U.S. with 3,400 deaths, putting it third behind Italy (currently 13,155) and Spain (9,387).

New York is the No. 1 hotspot in the States with a death toll from the coronavirus doubling in 72 hours to more than 1,900 on Thursday.

President Donald Trump is resisting calls to issue a national stay-at-home order to stem the spread of the virus despite his administration’s projections that tens of thousands of Americans are likely to be killed by the disease. One by one, though, states are increasingly pushing shutdown orders of their own.

AP contributed to this report.