The US has officially surpassed every other country in the world as the global hotspot for

COVID-19.

The death toll hits a thousand and then two thousand three days later.

Doctors, nurses and hospital staff do battle on the front lines without the protective

gear they need.

This is America Dissected and I'm your host, Dr. Abdul El Sayyad.

Over the weekend, the two thousandth victim of coronavirus passed in the United States.

That was less than three days after the US had hit a thousand deaths.

As COVID continues to inundate our hospitals, I want to take a second to explain why the

rate of deaths is increasing so rapidly.

First, that's because the number of COVID cases continues to climb.

As of Monday, there have been 144,000 confirmed cases of COVID in the US, but that's probably

an underestimate of the actual burden of disease in America.

To understand why, I want you to think about how we know that a case is in fact a case.

First, the person had to be tested and given the low rate of testing in the US and the fact

that we're mainly testing people who are seriously ill already, we're likely missing a lot

of the more mild or asymptomatic cases that aren't getting tested.

The other reason is because we're testing people after they get symptoms.

We know that the incubation period, the time it takes for people to get symptoms after

they've gotten the virus, is between two and 14 days, with a median time of five days.

That means that on average, there's a five-day gap between when they actually get COVID

and when they get symptoms.

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