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.
US reports over 200K new cases for 10th straight day
There were 229,386 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in the United States on Thursday, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.
It's the 10th consecutive day that the country has reported more than 200,000 new cases. Thursday's tally is less than the country's all-time high of 302,506 newly confirmed infections on Jan. 2, Johns Hopkins data shows.
An additional 3,769 new deaths from COVID-19 were registered nationwide on Thursday, down from a peak of 4,462 fatalities logged on Jan. 12, according to Johns Hopkins data.
COVID-19 data may be skewed due to possible lags in reporting over the holidays followed by a potentially very large backlog.
A total of 23,314,238 people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 388,705 have died, according to Johns Hopkins data. The cases include people from all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., and other U.S. territories as well as repatriated citizens.
Much of the country was under lockdown by the end of March as the first wave of pandemic hit. By May 20, all U.S. states had begun lifting stay-at-home orders and other restrictions put in place to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. The day-to-day increase in the country's cases then hovered around 20,000 for a couple of weeks before shooting back up over the summer.
The numbers lingered around 40,000 to 50,000 from mid-August through early October before surging again to record levels, crossing 100,000 for the first time on Nov. 4, then reaching 200,000 on Nov. 27 before topping 300,000 on Jan. 2.