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FILE PHOTO: Staff administer tests for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, as cases spread in the Midwest, October 2, 2020. REUTERS / Alex Wroblewski reuters_tickers
This content was published on Oct 16, 2020 – 22:06
By Brendan O’Brien and Maria Caspani
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Two weeks ago, Mark Schultz was getting ready to go to work at his tavern in the Wisconsin town of Oshkosh when he began to sweat, ache and feel cold.
Within days, the 64-year-old was in an intensive care unit at a local hospital fighting for his life.
Schultz, her 45-year-old fiancé and their 10-year-old son are three of 41,000 Wisconsinites who have tested positive for the virus in the past two weeks, according to state health officials.
“I want people to know that this is real. This is not a hoax. This is not fake news like the president said,” Schultz said.
Wisconsin has recently become an epicenter of the pandemic in the United States.
On Friday, the state health services department reported grim records as daily COVID-19 cases hit 3,861 and the seven-day average of new confirmed cases surpassed 3,000 for the first time.
“This virus is amazing what it does to people,” he said in a telephone interview with Reuters on Friday from his home, four days after leaving the hospital. “I literally thought I was taking my last breath. It’s like someone has a foot on your chest.”
US Surgeon General Jerome Adams, who traveled to Wisconsin to announce the opening of a new testing center in Neenah, told a news conference Friday that the cases and the state’s positivity rate were heading in the “wrong direction.”
Despite the surge in cases in Wisconsin, President Donald Trump plans to make a campaign stop in Janesville on Saturday as he seeks to make up for time lost during his own fight with the coronavirus earlier this month.
“Wear a mask,” Schultz told those planning to attend. “There are so many unknowns with this thing. That’s the scary part.”
For the second day in a row, the United States reported more than 60,000 new coronavirus cases on Thursday as infections surge in all regions of the country, according to a Reuters analysis.
The United States reported more than 63,000 new cases Thursday and more than 60,000 new cases Wednesday, a level in consecutive days not seen since the end of July and as the total number of cases in the United States exceeded 8 million.
THE ELECTIONS ARE COMING
The increase in cases occurs in the last weeks before the presidential elections on November 3. Trump has continued to downplay the threat to public health posed by the virus that has killed more than 217,000 Americans and 1 million worldwide.
The increase in cases in the US is beginning to tax hospitals in some regions, with Wisconsin establishing a field hospital and reporting that in some areas more than 90% of the beds in the hospital’s intensive care units were occupied. until Thursday.
The field hospital had not yet received its first patient as of Friday morning, according to a spokesman for the Wisconsin Department of Administration.
Meanwhile, in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott said Friday the state was increasing staffing and medical supplies, as well as personal protective equipment for hospitals in Amarillo, Lubbock, and surrounding counties, which are seeing an increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations.
Deaths nationwide remain fairly constant at 700 a day, but health experts warn that deaths are a lagging indicator rising weeks after a spike in cases.
Deaths were already on the rise in several Midwestern states over the past two weeks compared to the prior two-week period, including Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, South Dakota and Wisconsin.
(Reporting by Lisa Shumaker and Brendan O’Brien in Chicago, additional reporting and writing by Maria Caspani in New York, Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
