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Johns Hopkins University’s death toll in the country reached 58,351 as of Tuesday night, surpassing the 58,220 who died during the Vietnam War that lasted almost 20 years, according to the National Archives.

But the rate of deaths during the so far three-month-long coronavirus pandemic outpaces the fatality rate during the deadliest year during the war, NPR reported. The current death rate reaches 17.6 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to in 1968, when 8.5 troops for every 100,000 residents were killed.

The coronavirus has also killed many people per day, with the daily death toll passing 2,000 eight days during April so far. The deadliest day of the Vietnam War occurred on Jan. 31, 1968, the day of the Tet Offensive, when 246 US people were killed, The Hill reported.

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly compared the pandemic to fighting a war against the “invisible enemy.”

The Vietnam War is known for being the first war televised in US living rooms, and the coronavirus pandemic is also believed to be the first covered during a televised daily news cycle.

About 30 percent of the deaths in the US have occurred in New York, which has been badly struck by the virus, according to data from The New York Times.

The number of confirmed cases in the US surpassed 1 million on Tuesday, as the country has documented about a third of the cases confirmed worldwide. The US death toll comprises more than a quarter of the number of deaths worldwide.

Vietnam has currently reported 270 cases of coronavirus and no deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.

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Any move to replace Alex Azar would be contingent on US President Donald Trump deciding to move forward, and there is currently little appetite inside the White House for a big shakeup amid the coronavirus pandemic. The official stressed that nothing is imminent, but there are discussions underway at the White House about replacing Azar.

The discussions come after Trump appointed Vice President Mike Pence, rather than Azar, as the White House’s point man for coronavirus response at a rare presidential news conference. Trump had privately expressed frustration over Azar’s lack of communication on key issues as the head of the White House coronavirus task force.

Azar has also been at odds with Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma, an ally of Pence’s from Indiana who has been involved in the coronavirus task force briefings.

As the coronavirus spreads across the nation, the Trump administration has been criticized for its handling of the pandemic, namely by governors, on both sides of the aisle, in desperate need of critical supplies for their states as the President has moved forward on indicating that many states can reopen by May 1.

More than 97% of the US population is currently under a stay-at-home or shelter-in-place order as the coronavirus continues to upend life and the US economy. As of Saturday, more than 50,000 Americans have died from the virus and the number of cases is nearing 1 million.

In a statement Saturday night, deputy White House secretary Judd Deere said, “The Department of Health and Human Services, under the leadership of Secretary Azar, continues to lead on a number of the President’s priorities. Any speculation about personnel is irresponsible and a distraction from our whole-of-government response to COVID-19.”

The move to replace Azar was first reported by the Wall Street Journal and Politico.

“Secretary Azar is busy responding to a global, public health crisis and doesn’t have time for palace intrigue,” HHS spokeswoman Caitlin Oakley said in response to the reports.

The discussions come amid two major shifts in top personnel at the HHS in recent weeks — changes that follow months of turmoil at the agency.

Last week, former 2016 Trump campaign adviser Michael Caputo was named to serve as the agency’s new spokesman. A source familiar with the situation told CNN that Caputo was brought in because of the President’s distrust of Azar and to expect to see an uncomfortable power dynamic between the two men.

And earlier this week, the director of the agency’s office involved in developing a coronavirus vaccine said he was abruptly dismissed from his post in part because he resisted efforts to widen the availability of a coronavirus treatment pushed by the President.

Dr. Rick Bright, who had led the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, had clashed directly with Azar, two people familiar with the situation told CNN. A senior HHS official denied that Bright and Azar clashed.

As secretary, Azar has overseen several top administration priorities, including efforts to weaken the Affordable Care Act, combat the opioid crisis, and reduce the cost of prescription drugs.

A senior Republican told CNN that discussions about possibly removing Azar are not surprising because he has been on thin ice for months — partially for genuine problems handling the coronavirus pandemic as well as frustrating the President earlier for how he dealt with other issues, like Obamacare.

Another source who is close to Azar but critical of some of his actions said he believes the talk about possibly replacing him is coming from advisers close to the President who is using Azar as a scapegoat for White House missteps, including Trump’s statements at the White House briefing this week regarding disinfectant and heat being able to kill the virus.

The second source said Azar is “a good guy,” who definitely made mistakes but is also being used to cover for the President’s own missteps and Trump’s reluctance to move on from the pandemic because of his concerns about the economy. This source also said that the President was getting mixed advice on firing Azar during the pandemic crisis. Some people would like to replace him, but others said it would just look bad and add to the chaos, the source added.

Azar, who joined the Trump administration in January 2018, served as general counsel and deputy secretary of the agency under former President George W. Bush. He then joined Eli Lilly, becoming president of Lilly USA in 2012. He spent nearly nine years at the company, during which time it and other drugmakers greatly hiked prices.

He has appointed Health and Human Services secretary after his predecessor Tom Price resigned over his use of private planes for government business trips.

An economist and lawyer by training, Azar clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in the early 1990s and later worked under Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel on the Clinton Whitewater investigation who defended Trump during his impeachment trial.

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The death toll of COVID-19 patients in the US rose by more than 2,000 for the fourth day in a row.

The US reached the grim milestones as some states announced timetables for lifting restrictions aimed at blunting the pandemic, P.M. News reported.

Total deaths in California topped 1,000 on Friday.

It was the eighth state to reach that milestone and the first on the West Coast, according to a Reuters tally.

The number of new cases reported has accelerated in the past three days, with 31,425 cases reported on Thursday.

A record increase of 35,715 new cases was reported on April 10.

The infections and fatalities are spread unevenly across the country.

More densely populated places such as New York account for nearly half the total US deaths. The death toll was 14,636 on Friday.

The state also accounts for about a third of confirmed cases, reporting 222,284 cases.

Sweeping stay-at-home orders in 42 states to combat the new coronavirus have shuttered businesses, disrupted lives and decimated the economy.

Some protesters in states such as Michigan have taken to the streets to urge governors to rethink the restrictions.

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Governments expanded lockdowns to affect about half of the planet, with funeral parties banned in the Democratic Republic of Congo, New York locking up its famed street basketball courts, and hard-hit Italy extending its economically-crippling lockdown until April 13.

More than 900,000 people have been infected by the novel coronavirus and nearly 46,000 have died since it first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year, according to an AFP tally.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), said the number would hit one million “in the next few days.”

“I am deeply concerned about the rapid escalation and global spread of infection,“ he said.

“The entire world is shut down,“ said US President Donald Trump(pix). “It’s very sad.”

Cases in the United States soared, rising to more than 213,000, and deaths neared 4,800, according to the Johns Hopkins University database.

Among the victims was a six-week-old in Connecticut who was brought unresponsive to a hospital late last week, believed to be the youngest victim yet of the virus.

“Testing confirmed last night that the newborn was Covid-19 positive,“ Governor Ned Lamont wrote on Twitter. “This is absolutely heartbreaking.”

The victims of the new coronavirus have been disproportionately elderly, but a number of recent cases have highlighted that the disease can befall even youngsters with seemingly strong immune systems.

The dead have included a 13-year-old in France, a 12-year-old in Belgium, and 13-year-old Ismail Mohamed Abdullah in Britain, whose family said the “gentle and kind” boy had no underlying health issues.

The US numbers continued to outpace the rest of the globe, though Washington made clear it believes China, with a reported 82,000 cases, is deliberately masking its figures.

“How do we know” if they are accurate, Trump asked at a press conference, not denying a Bloomberg report that US intelligence has concluded China is concealing the extent of the coronavirus pandemic there.

“Their numbers seem to be a little bit on the light side,“ Trump said.

Densely populated New York continued to be the US epicenter.

Across the city refrigerated trucks grimly parked outside hospitals to deal with the surge in bodies.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced he was closing all playgrounds and basketball courts to enforce “social distancing” to halt transmission.

“You still see too many situations with too much density by young people,“ he said. “No density, no basketball games.”

In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis ordered all 21 million residents of the Sunshine State to stay inside for one month, after having resisted a lockdown for weeks.

Germany extended to April 19 its bans on gatherings of more than two people outdoors, with Chancellor Angela Merkel warning that families may not be able to visit during Easter celebrations.

“A pandemic does not recognize holidays,“ she said.

In Greece, too, the Orthodox Church’s Holy Synod said all churches were to remain closed over the Easter period, the biggest celebration of the year which culminates on April 19.

The global crisis wiped more major events off the calendar with Wimbledon, the signature event of tennis, canceled for the first time since World War II.

And in a sign of shifting focus, Britain said that UN climate talks due in November in Glasgow were being postponed.

Lockdowns have been especially challenging in developing countries, with some of the world’s poorest fearing they could lose their livelihoods entirely.

Dwellers of South Africa’s townships say it is simply impossible to stay at home.

“We don’t have toilets… We don’t have water, so you must go out, “said Irene Tsetse, 55, who shares a one-bedroom shack in Khayelitsha Township with her son.

The Food and Agriculture Organization, WHO and the World Trade Organization warned in a joint statement that panic buying already seen in parts of the world could threaten food supplies.

“Uncertainty about food availability can spark a wave of export restrictions, creating a shortage on the global market,“ they said.

In Italy, half a million more people require help to afford meals, adding to the 2.7 million already in need last year, according to the country’s biggest agricultural union Coldiretti.

“Usually we serve 152,525 people. But now we’ve 70,000 more requests, “said Roberto Tuorto, who runs a food aid association.

It is crucial to “ensure that the economic crisis unleashed by the virus doesn’t become a security crisis, “he warned.

Britain and France both reported their highest daily death tolls from Covid-19, although there were signs that the epidemic could be peaking in Europe.

Italy’s death toll, the highest in the world, climbed past 13,000 and the government extended its lockdown until April 13.

“If we start loosening our measures now, all our efforts will have been in vain,“ Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte told the nation in a televised address.

In Spain, deaths passed 9,000 on Wednesday, but the rate of new cases continued to slow.

Fernando Simon, head of the health ministry’s emergency coordination unit, said it appeared the country may have passed the peak.

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Officials in California’s Placer County, near Sacramento, said Wednesday an elderly person who tested positive after returning from a San Francisco-to-Mexico cruise had died. The victim had underlying health problems, authorities said. California Gov. Gavin Newsom late Wednesday declared a statewide emergency due to coronavirus. Washington and Florida had already declared emergencies, and Hawaii also joined them Wednesday.

Washington also announced another death, bringing its total to 10. Most of those who died were residents of Life Care Center, a nursing home in Kirkland, a suburb east of Seattle. At least 39 cases have been reported in the Seattle area, where researchers say the virus may have been circulating undetected for weeks. Vice President Mike Pence was expected to meet with Washington Gov. Jay Inslee near Olympia on Thursday.

Seema Verma, head of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the agency is sending inspectors to Life Care along with experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to figure out what happened and determine whether the nursing home followed guidelines for preventing infections.

Last April, the state fined Life Care $67,000 over infection-control deficiencies following two flu outbreaks that affected 17 patients and staff. An unannounced follow-up inspection in June determined that Life Care had corrected the problems, Verma said, AP reported.

Meanwhile, public officials in Washington came under pressure to take more aggressive steps against the outbreak, including closing schools and canceling large events. While the state and Seattle have declared emergencies, giving leaders broad powers to suspend activities, they have not issued any orders to do so.

 “We have encouraged people who are responsible for large gatherings to give consideration whether it really makes sense to carry those on right now,” Gov. Jay Inslee said. “Right now, we are deferring to the judgment … of these organizations.”

While some individual schools and businesses have shut down, the governor said large-scale school closings have not been ordered because “there are so many ramifications for families and businesses,” especially for health care workers who might not be able to go to work because of child care responsibilities.

Local and state health officials have not recommended school closings unless the schools have had a confirmed case of the disease.

“School closures have been part of the pandemic response kit for a long time,” said Dr. Jeff Duchin, health officer for Seattle and King County. “We don’t have strong evidence about how important school closures are.”

Jennifer Hayles, 41, of Kirkland, said she was appalled that Inslee and health officials haven’t canceled next week’s Emerald City Comic-Con. The four-day cosplay and pop-culture event draws close to 100,000 people each year, and some participants, including D.C. Comics and Penguin Random House, have pulled out over the virus.

Hayles said she spent hundreds of dollars on tickets and other items related to the event but will have to skip it because she has a compromised immune system.

“There’s a lot of people who are talking about the economic cost of people forced to pull out of Comic-Con, but if we have an explosion of cases of coronavirus, the economic cost is going to be much higher,” Hayles said.

Comic Con’s organizer, Reedpop, announced Wednesday that it would make an exception to its no-refunds policy for those who want their money back, but said it remained committed to holding the event unless local, state or federal officials change their guidance.

Lakshmi Unni said that she was keeping her son, an eighth-grader at Redmond Middle School in Seattle’s eastern suburbs, home on Wednesday and that she had urged the school board and principal to close.

“Yesterday at least three kids were coughing,” Unni said. “We don’t know if they were sick with the virus, but if they do become sick, the chances of spreading are very, very high.”

Some schools, businesses and other employers aren’t waiting.

Seattle and King County public health officials urged businesses to allow employees to work remotely if possible, and the county said it will allow telecommuting for some of its workers for the next three weeks.

The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle announced it is canceling events at the complex and requiring nonessential staff to work remotely at least through the end of the month to lessen the chance of infection among patients with weakened immune systems.

School officials in Renton, south of Seattle, announced that Hazen High School will close for the rest of the week after a student tested positive for the coronavirus. Online petitions urged officials to close other schools on Seattle’s east side.

The F5 technology company closed its 44-story tower in downtown Seattle after learning an employee had been in contact with someone who tested positive for the virus. Outdoor recreation giant REI shut down its Seattle-area operations for two days as a precaution.

Health officials in North Carolina reported that a person from Wake County tested positive for the illness after visiting the nursing home. The patient’s flight from the Seattle area to the Raleigh-Durham airport raised fears other passengers were exposed to the virus.

“My understanding is we have the manifest. Now the trick is to go find them,” said Robert Redfield of the CDC.

Life Care Center said on its website that it is screening employees for symptoms before they start work and as they leave. The nursing home is prohibiting visits from residents’ family members.

Shortly before the California death was announced, Princess Cruise Lines notified passengers of its Grand Princess that federal health officials are investigating a “small cluster” of coronavirus cases connected to the ship’s mid-February voyage. It asked current passengers to stay in their cabins until they were cleared by medical staff and said those who had been on the previous voyage should contact their doctor if they develop fever or other symptoms.

The Grand Princess is at sea off Mexico and will return early to San Francisco, where CDC and company officials will meet to determine the course of action, the cruise line said. California planned to fly COVID-19 testing kits out to the ship, which won’t be allowed to dock until the test results are completed, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday.

In Los Angeles, a contract medical worker who was conducting screenings at the city’s main airport has tested positive for the virus. The person wore protective equipment while on the job so it was unclear how the worker contracted the virus, Homeland Security officials said.

In New York, health officials put hundreds of residents in self-quarantine after members of two families in the New York City suburb of New Rochelle were diagnosed with the virus. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the disease appeared to have spread from a lawyer to his wife, two children, a neighbor, and two others.

The new results brought the number of confirmed cases in the state to 11.

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“Yes, we are to certain countries where they have more of a breakout,“ Trump told reporters on Monday in response to a question on whether his administration would close US borders to more countries affected by the virus. “We are doing that. We’ve already done it as you know with three countries in addition to China. So, we will be doing more.”

Aside from banning foreign nationals who have visited China in the past 14 days, the US has also imposed travel restrictions for people coming in from Iran, Italy and South Korea — countries where the Covid-19 outbreak has been particularly severe.

Comments of Trump, made during a meeting on Monday with the heads of pharmaceutical companies called to discuss the pandemic, came as US health authorities reported that a sixth person in Washington state had died of the COVID-19, Bernama news agency reported.

The coronavirus has so far killed nearly 3,100 people globally and infected more than 88,000 others. While the US death toll itself was marginal, it has raised fears on what might happen if the virus becomes a pandemic within the country, just like in China.

To another question, he wasn’t ready yet to declare a national emergency over the outbreak.

“I don’t think you’ll need that because we’re in extremely good shape,“ he said. “We’re prepared for anything. We can always do that (an emergency declaration) at a later date if we need it, but I don’t think we need that now.”

Earlier, Trump heard from the heads of pharmaceutical companies, including big multinational brand names, that it will take at least a year to develop a “deployable” vaccine for the virus.

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