Trump Resists Issuing Nationwide Order as Deaths Top 5K

Sobering numbers from the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus pandemic tracker: The US has now recorded more than 5,100 COVID-19 deaths, behind only Italy and Spain, and numbers are continuing to rise sharply. More than a quarter of the US deaths have been in New York City. In Spain, the death toll rose above 10,000 Thursday after a single-day rise of 950, the Guardian reports. The virus has killed more than 13,000 people in Italy. Reuters reports that Indonesia has now reported 170 coronavirus deaths, the most of any East Asian country except China, where the pandemic began. The number of confirmed coronavirus infections in the US now stands at 216,000, the highest of any country in the world, the BBC reports.

The White House warned Wednesday that COVID-19 is likely to kill up to 240,000 Americans even with the current mitigation measures in place. Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday that Italy, which has a nationwide quarantine is place, is "the most comparable area to the United States at this point." President Trump, however, has rejected calls to bring in a nationwide stay-at-home order, preferring to leave it up to individual states, the AP reports. "There are some states that are different," he said Wednesday. "There are some states that don't have much of a problem." Stay-at-home orders now cover more than 285 million Americans in 40 states. (Florida changed course and issued a 30-day order Wednesday.)