“With one out of every 66 residents infected, the United States leads the world in COVID-19 cases,” Reuters reported on Saturday night, citing their own tally and calling it a "grim milestone." The New York Times confirmed the count, emphasizing that “no other country has reported as many cases.” Those forced to rely on lagging official data, yet unwilling to miss the news cycle, had to report that the US is ‘nearing’ five million cases.

The US indeed leads the world with over a fifth of total global deaths attributed to Covid-19, and over 25 percent of officially confirmed cases. However, when it comes to death per capita – roughly 500 per 1 million citizens – the country ranks better than the UK, Belgium, Peru, Spain, Italy, Chile and Sweden.

With the pandemic raging for over five months now, it is also hard to estimate how many of those cumulative five million infections are still active.

The current number of hospitalizations of people who tested positive for Covid-19 stand at just over 50,000 across the US, which is a slight drop from the peaks of nearly 60,000 back on July 24 and April 15.

President Donald Trump has waved off concerns about the rising numbers on multiple occasions, blaming the media of deliberately reporting the scariest figures, and claiming they are only high because there has been more mass testing for the virus across the country.

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