THE UNITED STATES could become the new epicentre for the coronavirus outbreak after a sharp increase in Covid-19 cases, the World Health Organisation has said. 

Dr Margaret Harris, a spokesperson for the WHO, said that they are seeing a “very large acceleration” in US cases and it has the potential to be the epicentre of the pandemic as a result.

In the past 24 hours, 85% of new cases were in Europe and the US, Margaret Harris told reporters including those at Sky News today. Of those, 40% were from the US. 

Yesterday morning, New York had 15,000 confirmed cases, representing 5% of the global total. Today it has over 20,000 confirmed cases.

The US has over 46,000 cases, with 582 deaths. This is out of a total of 392,100 cases across the world. Of that worldwide number, 102,850 have recovered and 17,000 have died.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump has said he wants to reopen the US for business in just weeks, as he claimed continued closures could result in more deaths than Covid-19 itself.

“We can’t have the cure be worse than the problem,” Trump told reporters at a press briefing, echoing a tweet he sent late on Sunday.

“We have to open our country because that causes problems that, in my opinion, could be far bigger problems.”