Welcome back to Robertson’s Reportings! This is the second week of reportings during distance learning. Here are some of the latest numbers:

• Confirmed Guilford County cases at 149, deaths at 10
• Confirmed North Carolina cases at 5,024, deaths at 108
• Confirmed United States cases at 645,621, deaths at 29,216 
• Confirmed worldwide cases at 2,090,110, deaths at 139,469

This week, worldwide cases surpassed two million. The good news is that some reports say that a few of the hardest hit cities may be seeing a flattened curve. New York is one of these. While New York has seen the greatest number of deaths in one day due to COVID-19 this week, hospitalizations have finally begun to stabilize. Unfortunately, this does not mean that the virus is done yet. New York’s shutdown is now set to end on May 15. In the meantime, President Trump plans to reopen some parts of the United States. This is in response to the 22 million Americans who have filed jobless claims in merely one month. Amid the chaos in America, Japan declared a state of emergency on Thursday as almost 9,000 citizens have been infected. 

While the idea that the virus came from Wuhan, China, and that it was originally a virus from bats has been confirmed, nobody is still completely sure as to exactly where the virus came from. Many sources accredited the beginning to an animal market in China, whereas others are starting to suspect Chinese laboratories. In regards to the Chinese government, the United States Secretary of Defense stated, “Even today, I see them withholding information, and I think we need to do more to continue to press them to share.” Scientists researching the COVID-19 genome mapping have understood that it has not been genetically altered, which may get rid of the possibility of it being weaponized. An epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles said, “If [China] took action six days earlier, there would have been much fewer patients and medical facilities would have been sufficient. We might have avoided the collapse of Wuhan’s medical system.”

See you next time on Robertson’s Reportings, coverage you can count on!