The United States is facing a grim benchmark: 200,000 deaths due to COVID-19.
On Saturday, Johns Hopkins reporting 199,285 Americans have died due to the virus. Of those, 5,467 are Arizonans.
"Did not having adequate testing in our state cause excess deaths? Absolutely," said Frank LoVecchio, ER Physician at Valleywise in Phoenix.
LoVecchio says in the early days of the pandemic when testing supplies were low, and in demand, himself and other medical workers would sometimes skip testing patients.
"I said, 'look we got one or two kits left, this patient had a cardiac arrest obviously from covid, why would I use a swab on this?'" said LoVecchio.
He says the amount of COVID-19 patients and people with COVID-19-like symptoms has decreased significantly recently. LoVecchio says it's not certain the exact cause of the decrease in cases, but says most likely it's due the mask mandate in the City of Phoenix and continued social distancing efforts.
In May, the United States surpassed 100,000 deaths, just four months after it's first case. According to Johns Hopkins data, the United States leads the world with the most coronavirus cases with 6.7 million, followed by India with 5.3 million.
