Florida was running out of ICU beds in numerous hospitals on Wednesday as COVID-19 cases continued to accumulate in the tens of thousands and the Trump administration seemed unable to stop it.
In Oklahoma, Governor Kevin Stitt, a Republican who was criticized for posting a photo of himself eating with his children in a crowded restaurant as COVID-19 spread through his state, announced Wednesday that he had tested positive for the virus. .
The 67,507 new cases reported nationwide on Tuesday were the second-highest daily number since the pandemic began, and states like Wisconsin (4,407), Nevada (1,104), Oklahoma (993), and Alaska (360) broke their records. previous numbers. of cases registered in a single day.
The death toll across the country as of Wednesday morning was 137,403 and up, with 3,454,352 cases reported, according to the latest NBC News count.
Four states in particular, Florida, Texas, Arizona, and California, continued to account for the majority of new cases and deaths.
Florida, where the Republican convention is scheduled to be held next month, approved a lousy benchmark on Wednesday with more than 300,000 cases of COVID-19 reported since the start of the pandemic.
According to the Florida Department of Health, more than 77,000 cases have been recorded in the past seven days, bringing the total number in the state to 301,629.
There were also 112 more deaths, setting the state on track to hit 5,000 COVID-19 deaths, NBC News numbers showed.
Tuesday was the second deadliest day of the pandemic in Florida, with 133 deaths, the most since July 1, when 145 were recorded, new figures show.
Finding a bed for all of those sick people became increasingly difficult with the Agency for Health Care Administration reporting that 54 hospitals in the state now have zero beds available in their intensive care units and another 40 hospitals have less than 10 percent availability of beds in their ICUs.
Ten of the ICU-free hospitals are in Miami-Dade, Florida’s most populous county and the state’s main coronavirus spot.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has been angered by his handling of the crisis, stoked more anger recently by referring to the increasing numbers of cases as a “problem.”
In other developments:
- President Donald Trump, who earlier this month predicted that the plague “would just go away,” again tried to put a positive spin on the increasingly dire situation. “We are doing well in many ways, and our country is becoming very strong,” Trump insisted before boarding Marine One on Wednesday. “When you look at those job numbers, we’ve never had job numbers like we have now. So it’s coming back very strongly.” Trump appeared to be referring to federal jobs figures released earlier this month that showed the US economy in June recovered 4.8 million of the 22 million jobs lost when the coronavirus crisis hit.
- Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, defended himself amid attempts by the White House to discredit him, calling the attacks “strangers” in an interview with The Atlantic. “Ultimately, it hurts the president to do that,” Fauci said this week. “When the staff lets something like that out and the whole scientific and press community rejects it, it finally hurts the president.” An opinion piece from Trump’s top trade adviser, Peter Navarro, released Tuesday said Fauci “has been wrong about everything I interacted with him” (the White House later tried to distance itself from Navarro’s column). When asked about Navarro, Fauci told the Atlantic: “I cannot explain to Peter Navarro. He is alone in a world. “
- Fauci received another cry of support from another powerful Republican. This time it was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who said he had “total” confidence in Fauci. Later, the doctor appeared with Vice President Mike Pence at a meeting of the Coronavirus Task Force.
- Dr. Robert Redfield, chief of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, raised his eyebrows, stating that the increase in cases in the southern states may have been caused by northerners who visited over the weekend. Memorial Day. “South, it all happened around June 12-16,” he said in an interview Tuesday with Dr. Howard Bauchner of The Journal of the American Medical Association. “It all exploded simultaneously.” Redfield did not endorse. his claim with no scientific data.
- Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that the Defense Department was sending reinforcements, a unit of the US Army’s Urban Increase Medical Task Force, where patients are quarantined at local hotels to save on sparse hospital beds.
“These teams, along with our recently established partnership with local hotels, will assist in our efforts to curb the spread of COVID-19 and ensure adequate hospital capacity in the Valley,” said Abbott.
Back in Oklahoma, Stitt said during a press conference from his home that he received the diagnosis Tuesday and that he feels a little “sore” but is otherwise fine. He said that his wife and children tested negative.
Trump’s ally, Stitt posted the photo in a March 14 tweet from his official Twitter account, which has since been withdrawn.
Stitt, whose mantra was “business as usual” at the start of the pandemic, was at the Trump rally in Tulsa last month where he was photographed without wearing a mask.
While Stitt gave no indication of where he caught the error, several Trump campaign staff members and others tested positive after attending the rally. And he said he has no plans to reverse Oklahoma’s reopening.
“Backing up and taking shelter in place does not eliminate” the virus, Stitt said. “It is very, very premature to think about stopping or going backwards” the reopening.
Stitt’s admission came on the same day that Oklahoma recorded a maximum of 993 new coronavirus cases in a single day, NBC News figures show. So far, that state has reported a total of 428 deaths and 21,738 confirmed infections.
Medical experts say the main culprit behind the recent spike in COVID-19 cases appears to be younger people who don’t wear masks in public or practice social distancing.
That appears to be the case in Ohio, a state led by a Republican governor who took decisive steps to flatten the curve long before the White House did, and then saw the number of new cases increase by four digits after its reopening.
In a televised address to the state, Governor Mike DeWine warned that if Ohio does not act now, “Florida and Arizona will be our future.”
“This is not a drill, certainly not a hoax,” said DeWine. “I ask each of you, wherever you live, to wear a mask every time you go out in public.”
Until now, DeWine had not issued a directive to wear masks statewide, fearing rejection by the Republican majority in the legislature that had resisted his moves to curb the coronavirus by closing Ohio.
“Sacrifice today for a better tomorrow,” said DeWine. “This virus will end … and don’t we all want to be around when it does?”
DeWine also expressed concern that meetings with friends and family could have serious consequences.
“Will the family reunion be worth it if his grandmother tests positive and dies? Will the food in the neighborhood be worth it if his neighbor ends up alone, on a ventilator, in the ICU? The game date will be worth it, if the children can go back to school in the fall?
Ohio is not the only state where new coronavirus patients tend to be younger.
“We certainly have seen a change,” Dr. Jeff Smith, director of operations at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, told MSNBC. “In early March and April, during our previous spikes, we were seeing patients mostly in their 80s and 90s who were very, very sick. Most of our hospitalized patients are now in their 40s and 50s. “
While these younger patients tend to recover faster, the concern is that they could infect “younger populations or vulnerable populations, and pass them on to the sick and the elderly,” Smith said.
