Southern U.S. states, which were hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic, are seeing a progressive drop in coronavirus cases, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Thursday.
"Hopefully, by this week and next week we will see the death rate really start to drop (across the country)," CDC Director Robert Redfield said in an interview to the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The United States has more than 5 million cases of confirmed coronavirus infections, the highest in the world, according to a Reuters tally.
However, Redfield warned that data from 21 U.S. states showed there was no drop in coronavirus cases for states such as Nebraska and Oklahoma.
"We don't need to have a third wave in the heartlands, we need to prevent that."
(Reporting By Mrinalika Roy in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)
