Dozens of babies have contracted the coronavirus in just one Texas county, authorities said, as the state continued to reach a record number of daily deaths.
Health officials made the grim announcement when the state reported a record 174 new deaths from coronavirus on Friday, numbers that are expected to increase further. It was the third day in a row that the state recorded more than 100 deaths.
“We currently have 85 babies under the age of one in Nueces County who tested positive for Covid-19,” said Annette Rodriguez, Corpus Christi Nueces County director of public health.
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“These babies have not yet reached their first birthday. Please help us stop the spread of this disease,” he added.
More than 3,700 Texans have so far died of the coronavirus. Some hospitals are now reporting shortages of beds in intensive care units for infected patients.
Dr. Alison Haddock of Baylor College of Medicine told the Associated Press that the current situation is worse than after Hurricane Harvey, which flooded Houston with flooding in 2017.
“I’ve never seen anything like this increase in COVID,” said Dr. Haddock, who has worked in emergency rooms since 2007. “We are doing our best, but we are not an ICU.”
Patients are waiting “hours and hours” to be admitted, he said, and less ill people are lying on beds in the hallways to accommodate the more seriously ill.
Texas was one of the first states to reopen after a national shutdown was implemented to contain the virus. Governor Greg Abbott gave the go-ahead to businesses, including bars and restaurants, to reopen in May.
After initially resisting mandates for people to wear masks, Abbott issued a state order earlier this month requiring Texans living in counties with more than 20 cases of coronavirus to wear one while frequenting businesses and public buildings.
Texas is not alone in its fight to contain the spread of the virus. Eighteen states in the United States were classified this week as the “red zone,” areas reporting 100 new cases per 100,000 people per week.
According to a leaked document, which was prepared by the White House Coronavirus Task Force and obtained by the Washington, DC-based nonprofit Center for Public Integrity, the classification requires those areas to implement more public health measures. strict to stop the spread.
Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah were named as red zone states.
The same document listed 11 states with positivity rates above 10 percent, which would also classify them as red zones: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, South Carolina, Texas, and Washington.
More than 3.5 million Americans have contracted the coronavirus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And more than 137,000 have lost their lives.
– With agencies
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