Washington, Apr 9 (IANS): The US has recorded nearly 2,000 coronavirus deaths for a second consecutive day, taking the total toll to 14,817, the second highest in the world after Italy which has 17,669 fatalities, according to the latest update by the Washington-based Johns Hopkins University.

More than half of the deaths in the US -- about 8,100 were concentrated in the New York area, including the states of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, reports Efe news citing the update as saying.

New York state is the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak in the country.

In New York City alone, 4,571 people have died.

Michigan with 959 deaths, Louisiana with 652, California with 505, Illinois with 462, Massachusetts with 433 and Washington with 431 were the states with the largest number of deaths outside the New York area.

The US continued to be the country with the higest number of COVID-19 infections on Wednesday with 432,132 confirmed cases after adding almost 32,000 new cases in the last 24 hours.

This is almost three times that of Spain and Italy, who have the second and third largest number of COVID-19 infections in the world, with 148,220 and 139,422 respectively.

Once again the New York area had the majority of confirmed cases with more than 200,000, while Michigan went past 20,000, California had 18,000, Louisiana 17,000 and Massachusetts and Pennsylvania 16,000.

Of all those infected, only 22,900 have been released to date, while around 9,300 are in intensive care units.

More than 2.2 million coronavirus tests have already been carried out throughout the country, which has a population of 328 million, at a rate of more than 100,000 a day.

Almost 90 per cent of the inhabitants live in areas that have been placed under lockdown.

US President Donald Trump's administration has said that its shutdown guidelines will remain in place until April 30.