There's No Way of Knowing How Many People Have Been Tested For Coronavirus in the U.S.

There is no longer any way to tell how many people in the U.S. have been tested for the coronavirus.

As the death toll from the virus rose to six in the U.S., the Center for Disease Control and Prevention removed data from its website showing how many tests have been carried out on suspected cases of coronavirus. The disappearance came less than a week since the first reported case of the virus spreading locally in the US.

The CDC did not respond to a question about why the data was removed. On Monday, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) wrote a letter to the agency demanding “why their website removed public data on the number of patients tested in the United States.”

On Tuesday, the number of confirmed infections rose to 106, but that figure is likely to rise significantly in the coming days after the Trump administration responded to criticism that it was not doing enough to combat the outbreak by promising to dramatically scale up it’s testing.

The CDC has come under fire for rolling out defective diagnostic kits and imposing highly restrictive rules for administering the tests, which may have contributed to the early spread of the virus.

The White House said Monday that by the end of the week, nearly one million tests could be conducted after it pulled in private companies and academic laboratories to develop and validate their own coronavirus tests.

But for those currently experiencing coronavirus-type symptoms, the lack of available testing could lead to significant health issues, including this Twitter user who has a history of chronic bronchitis:

Six people have so far died from coronavirus in the U.S. — all of them in Washington State. Four of those who died were residents of the Life Care Center nursing home in Kirkland, a suburb of Seattle.

The 106 confirmed infections are spread across 15 states.

The latest confirmed case was reported on Tuesday morning in New York. Gov. Andrew Cuomo reported that a 50-year-old man who lives in Westchester County, New York, and works in Manhattan tested positive for coronavirus — the second to do so in the state.

Two private schools that the man’s children attended were shut down for deep cleaning.

The man had no direct connection with China or any of the countries with significant outbreaks — though he did recently travel to Miami.

“It would be what we call a community spread case,” he said, adding that authorities are “tracing all that back.”

It was also revealed Tuesday that Vice President Mike Pence, who is heading up the coronavirus response for the administration, shook hands with the classmates of a student who has been quarantined after his mother came into contact with someone who has tested positive for coronavirus.

READ: Coronavirus has cropped up in New York and New Hampshire

Despite widespread criticism from experts about the government’s handling of the coronavirus response, the administration continues to claim it has a firm handle on the situation.

“I have the utmost confidence that we have the best medical system in the world and we will do everything we can acting together to combat this,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, told the House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday morning.

Rather than focusing on the human impact of the outbreak, President Donald Trump was focusing on the economic impact of the coronavirus on Tuesday morning, once again tweeting criticism of the Federal Reserve for not cutting rates.

Hours later the Fed announced it was cutting interest rates by 0.5% in response to the impact the coronavirus outbreak was having on the economy.

READ: Trump's tweet out some wild memes during the coronavirus outbreak

Globally, the coronavirus has infected more than 90,000 people and killed over 3,100 globally. The outbreak has put the world into “uncharted territory” accroding to the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus:

While infection rates and the death toll in China wane, infection clusters across the globe continue to report sharp spikes in cases. Iran has the deadliest outbreak outside China with 77 confirmed deaths, and on Tuesday authorities reported that 23 lawmakers — or 8 percent of Tehran’s parliament — were confirmed to be infected.

In South Korea, there are almost 5,000 cases confirmed in South Korea with President Moon Jae In promising to inject $25 billion to fight the outbreak.

“The whole country is at war against the infectious disease,” he said. “We believe that inspecting large numbers of people at the fastest speed in the world and making the results transparent and quick is the best thing we can do at this stage to prevent the spread of local infections.”

Cover: Two women wearing masks walk away from the Life Care Center in Kirkland, Wash., near Seattle, Monday, March 2, 2020. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

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