Authorities warned that the surge was likely to worsen over the next few weeks, inundating hospitals and further denting the economy.
President Donald Trump is under fire for suggesting that 99 per cent of coronavirus cases are "totally harmless" as the rate of infection soared across the US following the July 4 holiday weekend.
The nationwide number of deaths had exceeded 130,000 by Tuesday morning AEST, while the number of COVID-19 cases had reached almost 2.9 million, according to the Johns Hopkins University tally.
While authorities warned that the surge was likely to worsen over the next few weeks, inundating hospitals and further denting the economy, President Trump insisted that the country "had made a lot of progress" and that "our strategy is working"."There were no tests for a new virus, but now we have tested over 40 million people," he said. "By so doing, we show cases, 99 per cent of which are totally harmless.
Trump's Independence Day comments drew sharp criticism from governors and health experts, who accused the President of downplaying the escalating crisis and sending the wrong message by refusing to wear a mask. America’s top infectious diseases expert, Dr Anthony S Fauci, warned that the US was “knee deep in the first wave” of coronavirus, having exceeded 50,000 new cases a day several times over the past week.“I would say that this would not be considered a wave. It was a surge, or a resurgence of infections superimposed upon a baseline that really never got down to where we wanted it to go.”
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