Immune To COVID? New Study Suggests Why

More than 200,000 people are infected with COVID-19 in the United States, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

It was another grim milestone passed Wednesday afternoon, just hours after deaths in New York City topped 1,000, as the city continues to be the current epicenter of the outbreak in the U.S.

The Associated Press reported that overwhelmed hospitals in the city were loading bodies onto refrigerated morgue trucks, as ambulance sirens blared through the streets.

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"How does it end? And people want answers," New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. "I want answers. The answer is nobody knows for sure."

At least 1,100 people had died in New York City as of Wednesday evening, according to data tracked by Johns Hopkins University. More than 44,000 have been infected. Statewide, New York has recorded more than 76,000 cases.

(MORE: Passengers Still Stuck on Cruise Ships)

On Wednesday, the U.S. continued to surge far ahead of other nations in infections, with at least 206,000 confirmed cases. More than 4,700 people have died nationwide.

Worldwide, more than 932,000 people have been infected and at least 46,000 have died.

Latest Developments

United States

-All public school students in the state of California will finish the school year from home, as all schools will be closed for the remainder of the 2019-20 year.

-Grand Canyon National Park will be closed until further notice. It joins a growing list of national parks that have closed because hikers have overwhelmed them, making it difficult or impossible to practice safe social distancing on the trails.

-Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he will sign a statewide stay at home order to go into effect at midnight Thursday. Further details weren't immediately released. DeSantis had come under increasing fire for not imposing more restrictions. The state has more than 6,700 cases, the fifth highest in the nation behind New York, New Jersey, California and Michigan. At least 85 people have died in Florida.

-More than a dozen states have placed travel restrictions on residents, tourists or both, according to CNN. States including Florida, Rhode Island, West Virginia and several others have ordered visitors from other location to self isolate for 14 days. Some have set up highway checkpoints at state borders. Others, like Alaska, have gone one step further and ordered residents not to travel outside of their own communities.

-Hawaii reported its first death from COVID-19. As of Wednesday morning, Wyoming was the only state in the U.S. that had not recorded any coronavirus deaths. The state currently has 224 confirmed cases.

-A Florida man was arrested on the Hawaiian island of Kauai for violating a 14-day quarantine order on out of state travelers, the AP reported.

-The U.S. surgeon general’s office is joining the other health agencies who are reconsidering the initial message that discouraged the wearing of face masks by people with no symptoms of COVID-19. Surgeon General Jerome Adams said Wednesday morning on “Good Morning America” that he has asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to reexamine the guidelines, according to The Washington Post. The CDC had previously said it was reconsidering the recommendations.

-The coronavirus pandemic is the greatest challenge facing humanity since World War II, the head of the United Nations says. “It is a combination, on one hand, of a disease that represents a threat to everybody in the world and, second, because it has an economic impact that will bring a recession that probably has no parallel in the recent past,” Secretary-General António Guterres said in a press conference Tuesday night. “This is, indeed, the most challenging crisis we have faced since the Second World War.”

-Also Tuesday evening, the White House issued a grim prediction of how many Americans could die during the coronavirus pandemic. Between 100,000 and 240,000 people could be killed in the United States by COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus, Dr. Anthony Fauci and other top officials said at a news briefing from the White House with President Donald Trump. "I want every American to be prepared for the hard days that lie ahead," Trump said. "We're going to go through a very tough two weeks." He added that social distancing guidelines are a "matter of life and death." While other models have predicted a similar scenario and coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx previously said as many as 200,000 could die, Tuesday's briefing was the first time the White House had acknowledged specific numbers.

Worldwide

-Japan has added 49 more nations to its list of travelers banned from entering the country, including the U.S. In all, Japan has now barred entry to citizens from 73 countries. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe cited a rapid rise of new cases of COVID-19 in Japan as the reason for the restrictions. Japan has reported more than 2,100 cases and at least 57 deaths.

-Early and aggressive testing is one reason for Germany's low death rate, the AP reported. By mid-January, the country had already developed a test for COVID-19 and now has the capacity to test 500,000 people per week. Health experts believe the numbers in many other countries are underreported due to lack of testing. As of Wednesday morning, Germany had confirmed 72,383 cases and at least 788 deaths. “The reason why we in Germany have so few deaths at the moment compared to the number of infected can be largely explained by the fact that we are doing an extremely large number of lab diagnoses," virologist Dr. Christian Drosten told the AP.

-Spain's cases surged past 100,000 with more than 9,000 deaths. It is now the third country, behind the U.S. and Italy, to surpass the official record reported by China.

-Spain reported an 18% increase in calls to the country's domestic violence hotline during the first two weeks of a national lockdown, The Washington Post reported, while online consultations through the hotline’s website surged by 270 percent. “We know that the confinement situation increases the possibility of violence,” said Equality Minister Irene Montera in an interview on Spanish network Antena 3.

For the latest coronavirus information in your county and a full list of important resources to help you make the smartest decisions regarding the disease, check out our dedicated COVID-19 page.

The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.