The United States now has the most coronavirus cases of any country in the world, surpassing Italy and China, where the pandemic originated last year. According to the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine tracker, as of Thursday evening, there were 82,404 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S., which has a population of 327 million. In Italy, there were 80,589 cases among a population of 60.5 million, and in China there were 81, 782 cases among the country’s 1.3 billion residents. At least 1,178 people have died of the new virus in the U.S., far less than in Italy, Spain, China, and Iran. Italy and Spain have more cases per capita than anywhere else in the world.
Louisiana, with more than 2,300 cases as of Thursday afternoon, was experiencing the fastest growth in new cases in the world, according to The New York Times. New York is the epicenter of cases in the U.S., with at least 30,000 positive diagnoses and 331 deaths.