U.S. COVID-19 death toll passes 1,000, nearly a third of them in New York City

The U.S. passed 1,000 deaths from the COVID-19 coronavirus on Wednesday, hitting 1,046 deaths by Thursday morning, according to a running count kept by Johns Hopkins University. Nearly a third of those deaths, 280, were in New York City, where "a makeshift morgue was set up outside Bellevue Hospital, and the city’s police, their ranks dwindling as more fall ill, were told to patrol nearly empty streets to enforce social distancing," The Associated Press reports.

The U.S. has about 69,200 confirmed cases of COVID-19, making it No. 3 after China and Italy. Spain overtook China in registered COVID-19 deaths, 3,647, while Italy is reporting 7,503 deaths. Overall, there are more than 480,000 confirmed cases worldwide, 21,600 deaths, and 115,850 patients who recovered. Nearly a third of the world's population is in lockdown to slow the virus' spread.

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