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The United States has surpassed Italy and China in having the most confirmed coronavirus cases, according to a global case tracker run by Johns Hopkins University.

overwhelm hospitals in the coming days and weeks.

As of Thursday afternoon, the United States was reporting more than 82,400 cases, above China’s tally of more than 81,700 and Italy’s count of more than 80,500.

They call them corona taxis: Medics outfitted in protective gear, driving around the empty streets of Heidelberg to check on patients who are at home, five or six days into being sick with the coronavirus.They take a blood test, looking for signs that a patient is about to go into a steep decline. They might suggest hospitalization, even to a patient who has only mild symptoms; the chances of surviving that decline are vastly improved by being in a hospital when it begins.

Heidelberg’s corona taxis are only one initiative in one city. But they illustrate a level of engagement and a commitment of public resources in fighting the epidemic that help explain one of the most intriguing puzzles of the pandemic: Why is Germany’s death rate so low?

According to Johns Hopkins University, the country had more than 92,000 laboratory-confirmed infections as of midday Saturday, more than any other country except the United States, Italy and Spain.

The country’s decentralised political system has allowed some of the 16 federal states to surge ahead with special exemptions for local businesses, such as North Rhine-Westphalia allowing the opening of larger furniture stores.

“No one likes to hear it, but we are not in the end phase of this pandemic, but at the beginning,” the German chancellor said. “We will continue to have to live with it for a long time.”

The chancellor’s handling of the crisis, while drawing praise across the world, has also been the subject of criticism in Germany, where liberal politicians accused the conservative politician of acting in a more executive role than anticipated in the country’s constitution.

In November, as Covid-19 cases began to rise, thousands of people gathered in Berlin to protest against restrictions. In among the conspiracy theorists and extremists were several lawmakers from the country’s main opposition party, the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany.

the AfD’s support has slipped. Already struggling to reach new voters, its embrace of anti-lockdown sentiment seems to have further limited its appeal — and sped up its transformation into an extremist organization.

the AfD’s initial response was cautious. Prominent party legislators warned about the virus, encouraged the government to act swiftly and voted for a package of economic relief. “Closing ranks is our first duty as citizens now,” Alexander Gauland, a co-leader of the party, said.

a growing volume of evidence — gleaned from public records released under the Freedom of Information Act, digital sleuthing through online databases, scientific papers analyzing the virus and its spread, and leaks from within the U.S. government — suggests that the pandemic most likely occurred because a virus escaped from a research lab in Wuhan, China.

If so, it would be the most costly accident in the history of science.

The SARS-like virus that caused the pandemic emerged in Wuhan, the city where the world’s foremost research lab for SARS-like viruses is located.

Strategists affiliated with the Obama and Romney campaigns say they have access to information about the personal lives of voters at a scale never before imagined. And they are using that data to try to influence voting habits — in effect, to train voters to go to the polls through subtle cues, rewards and threats in a manner akin to the marketing efforts of credit card companies and big-box retailers.

In the weeks before Election Day, millions of voters will hear from callers with surprisingly detailed knowledge of their lives. These callers — friends of friends or long-lost work colleagues — will identify themselves as volunteers for the campaigns or independent political groups. The callers will be guided by scripts and call lists compiled by people — or computers — with access to details like whether voters may have visited pornography Web sites, have homes in foreclosure, are more prone to drink Michelob Ultra than Corona or have gay friends or enjoy expensive vacations.

“You don’t want your analytical efforts to be obvious because voters get creeped out,” said a Romney campaign official who was not authorized to speak to a reporter. “A lot of what we’re doing is behind the scenes.”

Ports around the globe are turning cruise ships away en mass amid the corona pandemic, leaving thousands of passengers stranded even as some make desperate pleas for help while sickness spreads aboard.

at least ten ships around the world – carrying nearly 10,000 passengers – are still stuck at sea after having been turned away from their destination ports in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. Some of the ships are facing increasingly desperate medical situations, including one carrying hundreds of American, Canadian, Australian and British passengers, currently off the coast of Ecuador and seeking permission to dock in Florida.

Dramatic scenes of coronavirus-stricken cruises, such as the Grand Princess in California and the Diamond Princess in Japan, have become synonymous with the pandemic. The plight of those still adrift highlights how cruise ships have become a kind of pariah of the seas, as cities push back against becoming the next home for a potentially infected vessel.

New York is the center of the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States, and Elmhurst hospital in the New York City borough of Queens is the center of the center.In just one 24-hour period this week, at least 13 patients were reported to have died at the hospital, where the medical examiner’s office has stationed a refrigerated trailer to act as a makeshift morgue. Officials have described the hospital as “overwhelmed”, “overrun” and calling out for one thing: “Help.”

The US surpassed virus hotspots China and Italy with 82,404 cases of infection on Thursday night, according to a tracker run by Johns Hopkins University. Hours earlier, New York’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, had announced there were 23,112 Covid-19 cases in New York City alone, and 365 deaths.

The hospital is located in one of the poorest and most diverse areas of the city, home to 20,000 recent immigrants from 112 different countries. It was already operating at 80% capacity before the coronavirus pandemic, with plans to expand its emergency department.

In recent days, epidemiologists and infectious disease specialists, as well as former top agency officials, have rushed to put out their own plans — by publishing preprint papers online and sharing ideas on Twitter and in op-eds

a consensus of sorts has begun to coalesce around several key ingredients for an American strategy to move forward while minimizing human and economic casualties. They include mounting a large-scale contact tracing effort, widespread testing, building up health care capacity before easing restrictions, making future quarantines more targeted, and allowing those who have recovered and have some immunity to go back to work.

While overall the peak of the epidemic may occur in late April or early May, the timing may be different in different states.

White House economists published a study last September that warned a pandemic disease could kill a half million Americans and devastate the economy.It went unheeded inside the administration.

In an interview, she said it would encompass school closures, shutting down many businesses and the sort of stay-at-home orders that many, but not all, states have imposed.“What it entails is something as drastic as you can get,”

Public health threats did not typically hurt the economy, Mr. Philipson said. He suggested the virus would not be nearly as bad as a normal flu season.

It doesn’t hurt either that South Korean authorities ensured testing was essentially free to all and that the country’s single-payer health care system does not disincentivize low-income people from seeking preventive treatment, as is often the case in the United States.

And then there’s the question of leadership. President Trump spun the crisis as a Chinese menace easily dealt with at U.S. borders. He bemoaned his political opponents for inflating a minor threat. And he repeatedly shared inaccurate information and advice to Americans about the reach of the virus and the government’s capacity to reckon with it

Contrast that with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who has taken a back seat as health officials communicate twice a day to the public about the state of the outbreak.

The more people we have who can afford to stay home the better off we’ll be, at least for the duration of the outbreak.

After the 2008-2009 economic meltdown, the United States government and governments around the world created trillions of dollars worth of currency out of thin air and injected it into the economy, usually by buying back their own debt, in an effort to stimulate demand and reverse the multiplier effec

Buying back government debt isn’t necessarily the best way to stimulate the economy, however. The money goes mostly to people who are already rich, and they have very little incentive to invest that money when everyone else is losing income.

public health experts are largely in agreement about this. If we don’t “flatten the curve” — which is to say, make sure our coronavirus patients come to our hospitals in manageable waves, rather than all at once — then we will soon become Italy, where doctors are now facing the possibility of wartime triage, which would require making choices about who lives and who dies based on a patient’s age, because there aren’t enough beds and ventilators to go around

But rather than flattening the curve, Fox is behind the curve. Each and every time.

this swagger about carrying on business as usual goes beyond reflexive pro-Trump and pro-market reflexes.

This is how South Korea flattened its coronavirus curveSouth Korea's COVID-19 infection rates have been falling for two weeks thanks to a rigorous testing regime and clear public information.

Streetman, who works as a marketing manager at a gaming company in Seoul, received his negative results in less than 24 hours and is now one of more than 327,000 people out of the country's 51 million-strong population to have been tested for the coronavirus in South Korea since the country confirmed its first case Jan. 21.The U.S., which confirmed its first case the same day, is suffering from the repercussions of a weeks-late start in obtaining test kits

Here's what we can learn from South Korea.

True, his brand of immature leadership is not the only reason the United States lags behind South Korea in its pandemic response, including testing and containment. Organizational inertia and garden-variety bureaucratic politics matter as well.

the Trump White House’s inadequate handling of the outbreak highlights his every toddler-like instinct

The most obvious one is his predilection for temper tantrums

Good morning. A top US government doctor has turned whistleblower after he says he was pushed out of his role in the search for a coronavirus vaccine. Rick Bright told the New York Times he believed he was dismissed as director of the US health department’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority because he resisted Donald Trump’s push to use an unproven malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine, as a treatment for Covid-19:

Contrary to misguided directives, I limited the broad use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, promoted by the administration as a panacea, but which clearly lack scientific merit.

Trump and his cheerleaders at Fox News have recently backed away from promoting the possible benefits of hydroxychloroquine, after a trial of the drug in US veterans hospitals went badly. The president told reporters on Wednesday that he had “never heard of” Bright.

Companies, including grocery chains Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, airport concession operators, local authorities and even a furniture company owned by the billionaire Warren Buffett have moved to control efforts to unionize as workers become increasingly concerned about workplace safety during the emergency.

“It’s a blatant anti-union letter,” said a Trader Joe’s employee in New Jersey who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “It’s in bad taste and shows the greed this company has instead of taking proactive measures to keep the crew and customers safe.” A Trader Joe’s spokesperson told the Guardi

As workers on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic have organized protests and strikes, several employers have responded by stepping up attempts to oppose unionization, repeal workers’ rights won in bargaining, and fire workers en masse who had recently publicized intent to organize a union in their workplace.

the rampant destruction of the natural world – is rapidly halted,

“There is a single species responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic – us,”

These activities cause pandemics by bringing more people into contact and conflict with animals, from which 70% of emerging human diseases originate, they said. Combined with urbanisation and the explosive growth of global air travel, this enabled a harmless virus in Asian bats to bring “untold human suffering and halt economies and societies around the world. This is the human hand in pandemic emergence. Yet [Covid-19] may be only the beginning.”

This early work is critical to campaigns trying to build a support base for election day. But this year, the Covid-19 pandemic has made it nearly impossible to register new voters.

just 504 people registered in March as Covid-19 restrictions went in to effect. By comparison, more than 7,200 voters registered the month before.

“When I called my city clerk’s office, she said, ‘Well, once Covid-19 is over, you can register to vote,’” said Olivia Zink, the executive director of Open Democracy, a civic action group. It could be several more months before offices fully reopen.

Carolyn Goodman, the independent mayor of Las Vegas, has said she wants the city’s casinos, hotels and stadiums to quickly reopen in an interview that attracted widespread criticism.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who was clearly flabbergasted, in an interview on Wednesday.

Cooper asked Goodman if the city would have more than the 150 deaths it has tallied had it not imposed social distancing measures.