Florida hit another sinister record, with 156 deaths from the virus, and health officials reported a staggering 13,965 new cases.
South Carolina confirmed 69 deaths, more than double any other day. In Louisiana, where authorities thought they had contained the virus earlier this year only to become a hot spot again, more than 2,000 new confirmed infections a day were averaged over the past week.
Many of the governors who lead the states with the highest growing number refused to order masks in public or prevented local officials from doing so. While several of them have changed course, including the Republican governor of Arkansas, and at least 25 states now have mask rules, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp banned cities and counties from requiring face-covering, and then sued Atlanta. to prevent the city from challenging his order.
The capital of Georgia and 14 other cities had ordered the use of masks, but the Republican governor has argued that no local directive can be more or less restrictive than its state mandates.
“How can we take care of our local needs when our state ties our hands behind our backs and then says, ‘Ignore the advice of the experts?'” Savannah Mayor Van Johnson told reporters. Then he added: “If you don’t want to protect us, give us an opportunity to protect us.”
Meanwhile, Arizona has been so affected by the virus that the metropolitan Phoenix medical examiner’s office has purchased portable storage coolers and ordered more to handle an influx of bodies, reminiscent of New York City in the peak of the pandemic earlier this year. .
The usual deposit at the Arizona agency morgue was 63% full on Thursday. Marcy Flanagan, executive director of the Maricopa County Department of Public Health, said many funeral homes are at capacity and cannot accept more bodies.
In Texas, the increasing number is affecting large cities like Houston, as well as smaller communities along the border with Mexico. This month, Hidalgo County, about 220 miles (354 km) south of San Antonio on the border, has reported more deaths than Harris County in Houston.
Dr. Ivan Meléndez, the Hidalgo County public health authority, said it is not uncommon for the body of a COVID-19 patient to lie on a gurney for 10 hours before he can withdraw from overcrowded hospitals where the intensive care space is falling short.
“Before someone goes to bed in the COVID ICU, someone has to die there,” said Meléndez.
Elsewhere in the second-largest state, health officials in San Antonio also used refrigerated trailers to store the dead, and soldiers prepared to take over a COVID-19 wing of a Houston hospital.
A team of 86-person Army doctors, nurses and support personnel were establishing a nursing station at United Memorial Medical Center and expected to begin treating up to 40 patients in the coming days.
Some of the soldiers across the country wore their uniforms. Others wore medical uniforms attached with strips of surgical tape that had their ranks, names, and medical titles.
“This facility, working with the United States Army, is something we ask for,” said US Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat from Houston, standing near the soldiers as they worked. “We have exhausted medical personnel who we are very thankful for, but we did not have enough.”
In South Carolina, where the coronavirus crisis was worsening, the Mayor of Charleston asked for spiritual help.
“We turn to God at a time like this,” said Mayor John Tecklenburg.
Declaring a day of prayer and remembrance in what has been nicknamed the Holy City for centuries by the number of church steeples dotting its colonial horizon, Tecklenburg was surrounded by pastors of various faiths who prayed for the dead, the sick, their families and medical care. workers, vaccine-seeking scientists, and politicians.
Charleston is one of the most important points in a state that is among the worst in the nation for the rate of new cases. South Carolina is a microcosm of how the virus has developed in the United States in recent months. Almost 39% of the more than 62,000 known cases in the state have been diagnosed in the past two weeks.
South Carolina has established COVID-19 hospitalization records almost every day this month. The 69 deaths reported Thursday exceeded 1,000 people killed by the virus, the 25th state to cross that grim threshold.
More than 13.5 million infections have been confirmed worldwide and more than 588,000 have died, according to a count by Johns Hopkins University. The numbers are likely to be higher for various reasons, including limited evidence.
In other parts of the world:
– The Brazilian Ministry of Health reported that the country had passed 2 million confirmed infections and 76,000 deaths. Since the end of May, Brazil has recorded more than 1,000 deaths a day on average on a horrible plateau that has not yet tilted down.
– With the summer holiday season in Europe speeding up by millions of months of confinement, scenes of British and German drunken tourists on the island of Mallorca in Spain ignore the rules of social estrangement and reports of American visitors scoffing at the measures of Quarantine in Ireland raised fears of a resurgence of infections.
– In France, which has seen new outbreaks, Prime Minister Jean Castex said the masks would be mandatory in closed public places starting next week, before August 1, as previously announced.
– India’s record daily rise of nearly 32,700 cases raised its total to nearly 1 million and prompted authorities to reimpose a three-day blockade and night curfew in the popular western beach state of Goa two weeks later. that it was reopened to tourists.
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Parra reported from Madrid and Collins reported from Columbia, South Carolina. Associated Press journalists from around the world contributed to this report.
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Follow all coverage of the AP pandemic at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak.
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