Florida, Arizona and Nevada have posted daily highs for new coronavirus infections, highlighting the worsening outbreak spread in several southern and western states, prompting some local governments to reverse plans for reopening.
Florida reported 9,585 new infections Saturday morning in the past 24 hours, setting a record for new cases for the second day in a row. Meanwhile, Arizona recorded 3,591 new cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, which coincides with its previous record on June 23, while Nevada revealed 1,099 new cases, double its previous peak.
The increase in cases has been most pronounced in a handful of southern and western states that reopened earlier and more aggressively than other states, serving as a warning to the potentially illusory nature of any perceived progress in virus control.
The new figures come after the United States recorded the pandemic’s highest daily case count on Friday, while Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, said the government’s current strategy to find and isolate the Infected people “did not work,” in part because of significant asymptomatic spread.
Changing bud geography
The worsening contagion in the south and west comes as the northern states, particularly New York and its neighbors, which were most affected initially, reported declining cases and began to move forward with reopening plans.
Earlier this week, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut imposed a mandatory 14-day quarantine on travelers from states with high infection rates like Texas and Florida, where about 13 percent of those tested on Friday tested positive.
Florida officials told bar owners on Friday to stop serving alcohol on their premises, after allowing the bars to reopen in early June.
While Texas Governor Greg Abbott, in a reversal of his first movements to relax the restrictions, On Friday, it ordered the closure of bars across the state and demanded that restaurants limit indoor seating capacity to 50 percent.
The announcement came as Texas continued a 15-day streak of record statewide hospitalizations for COVID-19, with more than 5,100 people treated for the disease on Friday, according to the Texas Tribune.
In an interview broadcast Friday night, Abbott expressed remorse at the initial pace of reopening bars, which began in phases on May 22.
“If I could go back and redo something, it probably would have been slowing down the opening of the bars, now looking at how fast the coronavirus spread in the bar setup,” Abbott told the KVIA news station in El Paso.
Take executive action to contain the spread of # COVID19.
More information: https://t.co/P6Ak08plcn pic.twitter.com/TjRHa06nw9
– Governor Greg Abbott (@GovAbbott) June 26, 2020
No state mandate
But despite the numbers of cases that skyrocketed, both Abbott and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis have refused to issue state mandates on the use of masks, choosing to leave that decision to local municipalities.
In a briefing on Friday, DeSantis attributed the increase in infections to young people who interacted more in recent weeks, adding that they faced a lower risk of dying than older people.
However, DeSantis recognized that these young people, even if they are not hospitalized, could transmit the virus to the elderly or people with conditions such as diabetes that make them susceptible to severe results with COVID-19.
SOURCE:
Al Jazeera and news agencies
