Coronavirus updates: US will soon have 'half a million' deaths, incoming CDC chief says
The U.S. is forecast to have almost 500,000 COVID-19 deaths by mid-February.
A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now infected more than 94.2 million people worldwide and killed over 2 million of them, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
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WHO experts investigating virus origins arrive in Wuhan
An international team of 13 scientists researching the origins of COVID-19 arrived Thursday in Wuhan, China, where the novel coronavirus was first discovered, according to the World Health Organization.
"The experts will begin their work immediately during the 2 weeks quarantine protocol for international travelers," the WHO wrote on Twitter.
All team members had to be tested for COVID-19 again in Singapore before flying to China. The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests were all negative, but two IgM antibody tests returned positive results. Those two scientists remain in Singapore as they are retested, according to the WHO.
965,000 US workers filed jobless claims last week
A total of 965,000 workers in the United States filed jobless claims last week, the U.S. Department of Labor said Thursday, an increase of 181,000 from the prior week.
The Labor Department also said that more than 18 million people were still receiving some form of unemployment benefits through all government programs for the week ending Dec. 26. For the comparable week in 2019, that figure was just above 2 million.
The weekly unemployment tally has fallen since peaking at 6.9 million in March but still remains elevated by historical standards.
The pre-pandemic record for weekly unemployment filings was 695,000 in 1982.
That record has been broken every week since late March.
As of last month, the unemployment rate in the U.S. was 6.7%. It was 3.5% last February.
-ABC News’ Catherine Thorbecke contributed to this report
US could see up to 477,000 COVID-19 deaths by Feb. 6
This week’s national ensemble forecast released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicts that 16,200 to 29,600 more Americans will likely die from COVID-19 in the week ending Feb. 2.
The national ensemble estimates a total of 440,000 to 477,000 deaths from the disease will be reported nationwide by that date.
Nearly all US metro areas 'in full resurgence': White House task force
Nearly all U.S. metro areas with over 500,000 people are in "full resurgence" of COVID-19, the White House coronavirus task force said in its latest report, obtained by ABC News Wednesday.
In the report, dated Jan. 10, the task force said the fall/winter surge has had nearly twice the rate of rise in COVID-19 cases as the spring and summer surges.
Several states, including Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, New Mexico and South Carolina, are also in "full pandemic resurgence," the report stated.
Only "aggressive mitigation" can "match a more aggressive virus," and Americans must take more precautions, "moving beyond what worked in the summer to more layered mitigation," the report stated.
The task force recommended uniform mask implementation and "strict physical distancing." Without that, "epidemics could quickly worsen as more transmissible variants spread and become predominant," it warned.
ABC News' Josh Margolin and Brian Hartman contributed to this report.
Mexico detects 1st case of UK variant
A new, more infectious variant of the novel coronavirus that was first detected in the United Kingdom has now been discovered in Mexico.
The strain, called B117, was confirmed in a 56-year-old foreign citizen who had traveled from Amsterdam to Mexico City on Dec. 28, and then to the northeastern city of Matamoros the following day. The individual was asymptomatic when he arrived in the country, according to Mexico's director general of epidemiology, Jose Luis Alomia Zegarra.
After testing positive for COVID-19, the man was admitted to a Mexican hospital last week where he remains intubated, Zegarra said.
Genomic sequencing of the patient's sample that tested positive for COVID-19 revealed its B117 lineage. More than 500 suspected cases of the U.K. variant have been tested in Mexico, but this is the country's first verified case, according to Zegarra.
Mexican health authorities are tracking contacts of the patient, including people who traveled on the same flight. Two individuals who showed symptoms have since tested negative for COVID-19, while another 31 are asymptomatic and remain in isolation. Officials have been unable to locate 12 others, Zegarra said.
The highly contagious strain has become prevalent in London and other parts of southeast England, after first being identified in the English county of Kent in September. The B117 variant has since been detected in over a dozen other countries.