By Ben Westcott, Adam Renton, Amy Woodyatt, Ed Upright, Meg Wagner, Melissa Macaya and Veronica Rocha, CNN
The United States reported 44,023 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, according to Johns Hopkins University, bringing the country's total confirmed infections to 5,573,847.
To date, at least 174,255 people have died in the US from coronavirus, with 1,078 new deaths reported on Thursday, according to Johns Hopkins.
The totals include cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as well as repatriated cases.
CNN’s map is tracking US cases:
From CNN's Jake Kwon and Gawon Bae in Seoul
South Korea recorded 315 new local cases of the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours, Vice Health Minister Kim Ganglip said today, marking the first time the country has identified more than 300 new daily cases since March 8.
The country has now seen new infections in the triple digits for eight consecutive days, with infections reported in every province except for Jeju island, according to the Health Ministry.
To date, 739 people related to the Sarang-jeil Church have tested positive as of Thursday evening, Kim said. The church has been at the center of the new outbreak in South Korea.
Using cellular network logs, the government said it had tracked down and instructed 15,000 people who visited a massive weekend rally against the government in Seoul on August 15 to get tested immediately.
Read more about the church cluster:
From journalist Kaori Enjoji in Tokyo
There have now been more than 60,000 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in Japan, according to the country's Health Ministry, after 1,190 new infections were recorded on Thursday.
Japan has recorded at least 23,600 Covid-19 cases since August 1, more than a third of its nationwide total since the pandemic began.
However, Shigeru Omi, chairman of a government advisory panel on Covid-19, said at a symposium on Thursday that the local epidemic was increasingly being brought under control.
“The situation is likely to have peaked at the national level,” Omi said.
But his remarks contrasted with those made by the president of the Japan Infectious Diseases Association, Kazuhiro Tateda, who said earlier this week that Japan is in the midst of a second wave and warned that the strain on the healthcare system needed to be minimized.
"A third and fourth wave can be expected in the future," he said.
The national death toll currently stands at 1,168, after 11 more deaths from the virus were recorded Thursday, the Health Ministry said.
From CNN Health’s Shelby Lin Erdman
Early coronavirus models run by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed as many as 2.4 million Americans could be dead from the virus by October, CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield told the Journal of the American Medical Association Thursday.
So far, more than 174,000 people have died and more than 5.5 million have been infected in the US, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Redfield, who estimated testing may have missed up to 90% of cases, said early models of the pandemic forecast millions of deaths.
“The first CDC models that were presented to me in late February, early March, they said that we were going to lose somewhere on the low end of a million and on the high end about 2.4 million before October,” Redfield said in the video interview.
Now, however, the CDC estimates that about 200,000 people will die by the end of the year, Redfield said -- significantly fewer than the early models projected.
But this is a big loss of life, the CDC head said. “And this is why, you know, if there's a message from us from a public health point of view, the most important thing we can do is do everything we can do to protect the vulnerable around us.”
While he’s sad about the thousands of Americans who have died, Redfield said he thinks the nation’s response to the pandemic has saved a lot of lives. “Every loss of life is tragic,” he said.
“We need to stay vigilant to the mitigation steps right now because come the fall and we have flu causing problems and we have Covid causing its problems and they build on each other, we could end up with another loss of significant life,” he said.
From journalist Isaac Yee
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made a pointed comparison between New Zealand's coronavirus situation and the epidemic in the United States today, two days after US President Donald Trump said the island nation had a "big outbreak."
There were 11 new coronavirus cases reported in New Zealand on Friday, Ardern said, adding that the country has "one of the lowest death rates," from the virus, especially compared to the US.
"New Zealand is among a small number of countries that still has a low rate of Covid cases, and one of the lowest Covid deaths rates in the world," Ardern said in a news conference.
"To give you just one example, the United States has 16,563 cases per million, we have 269 per million people."
New Zealand is currently grappling with a reemergence of cases, which came shortly after the country went more than 100 days with no local transmissions.
Ardern's comparison comes after Trump made comments disparaging New Zealand at a White House news conference on Wednesday.
"New Zealand, by the way, had a big outbreak," Trump said. "And other countries that were held up to try and make us look not as good as we should look -- because we've done an incredible job -- but they're having a lot of outbreaks."
Tracing an outbreak: Of the 11 new cases reported on Friday, nine were locally transmitted and two were imported from overseas, New Zealand's Director-General of Health Dr. Ashley Bloomfield said.
He added that five of the local cases are linked to churches in South Auckland, and four are related to household contacts of previous cases. The new infections bring New Zealand's total number of recorded cases to 1,315.
As of Friday, 88 of 89 active community cases have been traced back to a cluster identified in Auckland last week, while one case remains under investigation, Bloomfield said.
"We may not find all the answers for this cluster," Ardern warned, adding that the origins of the outbreak were still under investigation by health officials.
Some 15,714 coronavirus tests were conducted on Thursday, bringing the total number of tests taken in the country to 673,220, Bloomfield said.
Beijing residents going out in public won't have to wear a mask from Thursday, according to new government guidelines, as long as they aren't in close contact with other people.
The Beijing Center for Disease Prevention and Control released the new rules on Thursday, the latest sign that China's coronavirus epidemic is under control.
China reported just 22 new Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours on Friday, with no new infections reported in Beijing.
Under the new rules, residents in the Chinese capital only have to wear masks if they are going to have "close contact with other people."
Children should be accompanied by adults and encouraged to use proper hygiene, while spitting is not allowed.
From CNN Health’s Maggie Fox
Coronavirus deaths should start dropping around parts of the United States by next week, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield said Thursday, because people are doing more to control the virus by social distancing, staying out of crowds, wearing masks and washing hands.
“Interventions are going to have a lag of three or four weeks,” Redfield said in an interview with the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“You and I are going to see the cases continue to drop. And then hopefully this week and next week, you’re going to start seeing the death rate really start to drop again.”
But Redfield said not every region is improving. “There’s a warning sign … Middle America right now is getting stuck,” he said. “We don’t need to have a third wave in the heartland.”
States have to stick with the interventions meant to slow the spread of the virus, Redfield said.
According to Johns Hopkins University, more than 5.5 million people in the US have been diagnosed with coronavirus and more than 174,000 have died, although Redfield has said testing has likely caught only about one in 10 cases.
From CNN Health’s Shelby Lin Erdman
As many as 60 million Americans could have been infected with coronavirus, Director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Dr. Robert Redfield told the Journal of the American Medical Association Thursday.
The CDC released a report in June, published in JAMA, showing an infection rate in the United States of about 10%. Redfield said at the time he believed testing had missed 90% or more of cases.
Redfield said Thursday an infection rate of between 10-20% translates into as many as 60 million people who may have already been infected, but there’s not really any good data on the numbers yet.
“We’re in the process of obviously following up with the report that we did in JAMA that kind of let us understand that maybe for the 2 million cases we diagnosed, we had an estimated 20 million people infected,” Redfield said in the video interview.
“We've now expanded that throughout the country, so very large surveillance work in progress,” he said.
Redfield said he didn’t want to speculate on the number of Americans who may actually be infected with the virus, but he did offer an estimate.
“I really want to be data driven but there is enormous geographic variation. I can tell you that we have some areas that we're looking at less than 1% and we have other areas we're looking at 20%,” he said.
“I think if you're going to do a crude estimate, somewhere between 30 and 60 million people -- but let's let the data come out and see what the data shows.”
Confirmed cases: As of Thursday night, at least 5,573,501 coronavirus cases have been recorded across the US, according to Johns Hopkins University. The total includes at least 174,248 deaths.
Analysis from CNN's Julia Hollingsworth
In mid-March, as the coronavirus pandemic began to take hold in Europe and the United States, New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern presented her country with a choice.
They could let coronavirus creep into the community and brace for an onslaught, as other countries around the world had done. Or they could "go hard" by closing the border -- even if that initially hurt the island nation's hugely tourism-dependant economy.
Ardern opted for the second path. When New Zealand had only reported 28 cases, Ardern closed borders to foreigners, and when there were 102 cases, she announced a nationwide lockdown.
In effect, Ardern offered New Zealanders a deal: put up with some of the toughest rules in the world, and in return, be kept safe -- first from the deadly coronavirus, and later, from potential economic devastation.
For a while, it seemed that deal had paid off. New Zealand spent seven weeks under lockdown, five of them under strict rules that meant even takeaway food and traveling outside of their immediate neighborhood were off limits. But by June, life was basically back to normal -- and in August, New Zealand marked 100 days without any community transmission.
Then, last week, that changed.
Read the full analysis:
