(Reuters) – Florida and Texas, two states that have emerged as the latest hot spots for the US coronavirus outbreak, both reported record daily increases in confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Saturday, with nearly 20,000 additional infections combined. .
For the sixth consecutive day, Texas also posted a record high in the number of people hospitalized with highly contagious respiratory disease: 7,890 patients after 238 new admissions in the past 24 hours.
In comparison, New York State, the US epicenter of the outbreak months ago, reported just 844 hospitalizations on Saturday, well below the nearly 19,000 hospital beds occupied by COVID-19 patients at the peak of their coronavirus crisis.
During the first four days of July alone, a total of 14 states have posted a record daily increase in the number of individuals who tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus that has killed nearly 130,000 Americans.
And in another sign that the virus is spreading, at least 18 states, including the three most populous, California, Texas, and Florida, have published ominous infection rates as a percentage of diagnostic tests in the past two weeks.
The recent surge, most pronounced in the southern and western states, which were among the last to impose mandatory trade restrictions at the start of the pandemic and the first to relax them, alarmed public health officials ahead of the holiday celebrations on April 4. July.
Most Independence Day fireworks across the country have been canceled as state and local authorities urged Americans to avoid large crowds, practice safe social distancing, and wear face covers while in public. .
Not everyone heard those warnings. Video footage posted on social media showed a crowd of young adults dressed in swimsuits dancing to rock music in the shallow waters of Diamond Lake, a boating and recreation site in Cassopolis, Michigan.
The beaches were closed in much of southern California and southern Florida over the holiday weekend due to the resurgence of the coronavirus. But the spa in Ocean City, Maryland, was open to the public, as were the beaches along the Alabama Gulf Coast and Clearwater, Florida.
Confirmed Florida coronavirus cases rose by a record 11,458 on Saturday, the state health department said, marking the second time in three days that its number of cases increased by more than 10,000 in 24 hours.
The latest case numbers in Florida, which have yet to report hospitalizations statewide, exceeded the highest daily number reported by any European county during the height of the coronavirus outbreak there.
Meanwhile, in Texas, the number of new cases rose to a record 8,258 on Saturday. North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alaska, Missouri, Idaho and Alabama posted new daily highs on Friday.
Despite the increasing number of infections, the average daily number of deaths in the US has gradually decreased in recent weeks, reflecting the increasing proportion of positive tests among younger, healthier people, less prone to serious illness when they are infected.
OMINOUS SIGN OF VIRUS TRANSMISSIONS
Still, an increasing number of states report a worrying upward trend in the percentage of diagnostic tests that yield positive results, a key indicator of the spread of the community that experts call the positivity rate.
Positivity rates above 5% are worrisome by the World Health Organization, and the widely observed data from Johns Hopkins University shows that at least 18 states with average rates in the past two weeks exceeded that level and rose.
Eleven states averaged double-digit rates in the past seven days: Arizona (26%), Florida (18%), Nevada (16%), South Carolina (15%), Alabama (15%), Texas (14.5% ), Mississippi (14%), Georgia (13%), Idaho 11%), Kansas (10%) and Utah (10%). That was higher than four states with double-digit rates two weeks ago.
Even in California, which led the nation with statewide workplace closings and stay-at-home orders issued on March 19, the positivity rate has risen to an average of 7% over the past week.
In this context, the mayor of Miami-Dade County, Carlos Giménez, imposed an indefinite night curfew as of Friday and stopped the reopening of casinos and other entertainment venues.
Arkansas joined an effort Friday to demand the wearing of masks in public, with Governor Asa Hutchinson authorizing local governments to enact a “model ordinance” requiring face-covering. The move came a day after Texas Governor Greg Abbott was repealed and ordered to wear face masks in most public places in his state.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly sought to minimize the jump in confirmed cases based on further evidence and again this week predicted that the virus would “disappear.”
In a July 4 speech at the White House, Trump claimed without evidence that 99% of the cases in the United States were “totally harmless.”
Reports by Christine Chan in New York and Steve Gorman in Eureka, California; Additional reports by Peter Szekely in New York; Daniel Wallis and David Gregorio edition
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