Breaking: US now has the most coronavirus cases in the world

The United States now has more reported coronavirus cases than any other country in the world.

According to CNN Health’s tally of US cases, there are at least 82,079 cases of the novel coronavirus in the United States. Some 1,195 people have died.

The total includes cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other U.S. territories, as well as all repatriated cases.

At least 24 states reported over 100 new cases of the coronavirus on Thursday, as the US overtook China and Italy to have more confirmed infections than anywhere else in the world.

The worst outbreak continues to be in New York, which reported at least 6,447 new cases. That was followed by New Jersey, with 2,492, and Washington state with 627 new cases. Illinois confirmed 673 new cases, Massachusetts 579, and Michigan 561.

Bill Gates: “We have not peaked” and the US needs more lockdowns

Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates joined CNN’s global town hall to speak about the coronavirus pandemic and what needs to be done.

He’s been warning about the risks of a pandemic for years. Back in 2015, during a TED Talk, he warned that the greatest threat we face isn’t nuclear war, but a pandemic.

Since then, he has called for more funding in pandemic preparation, vaccine and diagnostic development, and simulation training — but “not much has happened.”

“This is kind of the nightmare scenario,” he said of the coronavirus pandemic.

Other countries have done better than the US: The countries hard hit by SARS in 2003, like those in Asia, “are the ones that have done best in this epidemic because they acted when the number of cases were still very, very small,” Gates said.

The US response, in contrast, has been slow and chaotic, he added. We might be better off now if we had “behaved a little bit like the countries that have done the best on this one.”

And it’s not over yet. “We have not peaked,” he warned, calling for more dramatic lockdowns to prevent further infections and deaths.

“Basically the whole country needs to do what was done in the part of China where they had these infections,” he added.

@ CNN