narvikk/iStock(NEW YORK) — A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now infected more than a million people across the globe, a quarter of whom are in the United States.The new respiratory virus, which causes an illness known officially as COVID-19, has spread to dozens of countries on every continent except Antarctica since it was first detected in China back in December. More than 211,000 people diagnosed with the disease worldwide have recovered, while over 53,000 have died, according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.The actual numbers are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, many unreported mild cases and suspicions that some governments are hiding the scope of their nations’ outbreaks.With more than 245,000 diagnosed cases of COVID-19, the U.S. has by far the highest national tally in the world. At least 6,058 people in the U.S. have died from the disease. Here’s how the story is developing Friday. All times Eastern:
5:48 a.m.: Google launches ‘community mobility reports’ during pandemicGoogle is launching a tool that will publicly track people’s movements amid the coronavirus pandemic, allowing health officials to check whether their communities are abiding by social-distancing measures.The California-based tech giant says it will publish and regularly update the “community mobility reports,” which are broken down by location and display the change in visits to public places such as grocery stores and parks. The tool, announced by the company late Thursday, uses “aggregated, anonymized sets of data” that Google has collected on users, including through Google Maps.Google says the reports “were developed to be helpful while adhering to our stringent privacy protocols and protecting people’s privacy.””No personally identifiable information, such as an individual’s location, contacts or movement, will be made available at any point,” the company says.
3 a.m.: US death toll tops 6,000The mounting death toll from the novel coronavirus in the United States surpassed 6,000 early Friday morning, according to a count kept by Johns Hopkins University.A vast majority of those deaths have occurred in New York state, the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak. The virus has claimed the lives of more than 1,500 people in New York City alone.The Federal Emergency Management Agency has asked the U.S. Department of Defense for 100,000 body bags due to the possibility that funeral homes across the country will become overwhelmed, a Pentagon spokesman told ABC News on Thursday.About 90% of the U.S. population is under stay-at-home orders, and many businesses are closed.Copyright © 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
