Florida reported another record one-day rise in coronavirus deaths on Tuesday, and cases in Texas passed the 400,000 mark, fueling fear that the United States is still not taking control of the outbreak and adding pressure on Congress to pass another massive economic aid package.
Public health experts are becoming concerned about the levels of infection in states such as Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee and Kentucky, while the surge in Florida along with Texas, Arizona and California this month has strained many hospitals.
The increase in cases has forced a U-turn on steps to reopen economies after the end of lockdowns put in place in March and April to slow the spread of the virus.
Florida has had 191 coronavirus deaths in the last 24 hours, the highest single-day rise since the start of the epidemic, the state health department said.
Texas, the second-most populous state, added more than 6,000 new cases on Monday, pushing its total to 401,477, according to a tally being kept by the Reuters news agency. Only three other states – California, Florida and New York – have more than 400,000 total cases.
The widening outbreak has pushed the US death toll from Covid-19 closer to the bleak 150,000 milestone, which the country is expected to cross this week and comes just over three months before the 3 November election, where Donald Trump seeks a second term. The US has more than 4.3m confirmed cases, according to totals tracked by Reuters and Johns Hopkins University.
The surge in cases in Florida prompted Trump last week to cancel the Republican convention events in Jacksonville in late August, which had already been rearranged from North Carolina.
There is, however, a glimmer of hope in the data from Texas, where the state health department reported that current hospitalizations due to Covid-19 fell on Monday.
Anthony Fauci, a top infectious diseases expert and the leading public health figure on the White House coronavirus task force, said there were signs the recent surge could be peaking in hard-hit states like Florida and Texas. But he warned that other parts of the country may be on the cusp of growing outbreaks.
“They may be cresting and coming back down,” Fauci told ABC’s Good Morning America regarding the state of the outbreak in several southern states.
But Fauci said there was a “very early indication” that the percentage of coronavirus tests that were positive was starting to rise in other states, such as Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee and Kentucky.
Fauci added on the same TV show that he was not in “any circumstances” misleading the American public, after another attack on him by the US president.
In New York, the state governor, Andrew Cuomo, added Illinois, Kentucky, Minnesota, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico to a list of places whose travelers must quarantine for 14 days when visiting New York. Thirty-one other states are on the list, which was unveiled last month.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
