Coronavirus live news: UK at 'critical point' in pandemic as US nears 200,000 deaths

England’s chief medical officer to warn of a ‘very challenging winter’; more than one in five Covid-19 deaths globally is in US; Lebanon sees record case rise. Follow the latest updatesTrump health official says ‘biology independent of politics’ as US nears 200,000 deathsUK at ‘critical point’ over Covid-19, top scientists to tell publicMutant virus: should we be worried that Sars-CoV-2 is changing‘Quite a year’: couples on being separated by the Covid pandemicSee all our coronavirus coverage 2.55am BST The New York Times reported on 12 August 2020 that the US toll had likely already passed 200,000 as excess deaths – or the number of deaths that have happened in a given period compared to the same period a year earlier – showed that 60,000 more people had died than the number officially linked to Covid-19. On 29 March, Dr Anthony Fauci, the leading US government infectious diseases expert, warned that the toll could get as high as this – at the time, 2,188 Americans had died from the virus: Related: Fauci warns coronavirus could kill as many as 200,000 Americans 2.40am BST The official death toll in the US is likely to pass 200,000 today. It is the highest toll in the world – and more than 60,000 deaths higher than the next worst, which is Brazil’s. According to Johns Hopkins University, the toll currently stands at 199,474.It took five months for the virus to kill the first 100,000 Americans and just over three months for the next 100,000. Here is our story from May: Related: US passes 100,000 coronavirus deaths as states relax lockdown measures Continue reading…
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