A leaked document from the White House Coronavirus Task Force and first reported by The Center for Public Integrity, a DC-based nonprofit newsroom, highlights 18 separate states as “red zones” for coronavirus cases that qualify for stronger public health restrictions following new outbreaks of coronavirus.
The document extensively reviews each state and its case count, positivity rate, total diagnostic tests per 100,000 people, and deaths per 100,000 people, among other statistics. It then provides suggestions on public messages and directives for state public officials to follow based on each state’s performance.
Designated red zones include Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah. This means they have registered more than 100 new cases for every 100,000 state residents in the past week, as well as a positive diagnostic test result of more than 10 percent.
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At the same time, 11 states are in the red zone for the positivity test, which means that more than 10 percent of diagnostic test results returned positive results for COVID-19 infections. Those states include Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, South Carolina, Texas, and Washington.
Public health recommendations for states in red zones present familiar messages, including wearing a mask while in public, closing places like bars and gyms, limiting meetings to 10 people or less, and social distancing.
Speaking to CNNDevin O’Malley, a spokesman for Vice President Mike Pence and the White House Coronavirus Task Force, said the report showed positive signs of change in some states. He did not dispute its authenticity.
“A few weeks ago, when the vice president held a White House Coronavirus Task Force press conference at HHS, he reported that 16 states met the criteria for increasing cases and increasing the positivity rate. As is in that report, there are only 10 states that fit that criteria. This is just a data point of many encouraging signs that we are seeing across the country as we continue to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, “O’Malley told journalists in a statement.
Other public health experts considered the recommendations and data to be good, and wonder why they were not disclosed.
“Just because it’s not public doesn’t make sense to me,” Ashish Jha of the Harvard Global Health Institute told the Center. “Why are we hiding this information from the American people? This should be published and updated every day. “
Nationally, the United States broke a grim record, reporting on Thursday 70,000 new confirmed cases of coronavirus. The United States currently has 3,578,593 confirmed cases, due to Johns Hopkins Facts.
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