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CHICAGO: Wisconsin and other states in the U.S. Midwest are battling an increase in COVID-19 cases, with new infections and hospitalizations rising to record levels in an ominous sign of a nationwide resurgence to as temperatures cool.
More than 22,000 new cases were reported Wednesday in the Midwest, eclipsing the previous record of more than 20,000 on October 9. Hospitalizations in those states hit a record for the 10th day in a row, as some hospitals began to feel the strain.
More than 86 percent of beds in Wisconsin’s intensive care units were in use as of Wednesday.
A field hospital was opened in a Milwaukee suburb in case medical facilities were overwhelmed. Orderly rows of makeshift cubicles enclosing beds and medical supplies filled the fairgrounds in West Allis, which has been the home of the Wisconsin State Fair since the late 1800s.
Dr. Paul Casey, medical director of the emergency department at Bellin Hospital in Green Bay, Wisconsin, said entire wards filled with COVID-19 patients were pushing resources “to the limit.”
“It’s going to get worse,” he told CNN on Thursday. “We predict it will peak in mid-November.”
More than 1,000 people were hospitalized for COVID-19 in Wisconsin on Wednesday, the state health department said. Health authorities recorded a nearly 25 percent increase in coronavirus hospitalizations in the past seven days compared to the previous week.
Other Midwestern states were also setting grim records.
Since early October, North Dakota and South Dakota have reported more new COVID-19 cases per capita than all but one country in the world, tiny Andorra.
These states are reporting three times more new cases per capita this month than the UK, Spain or France, where infections were also on the rise, according to a Reuters analysis.
“It’s quite concerning,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, America’s leading infectious disease expert, said in an interview with ABC television on Thursday. “We really have to redouble the fundamental public health measures that we talk about every day because they can make a difference.”
Fauci also warned of the risks of crowded gatherings, as President Donald Trump returned to the election campaign after recovering from his own attack with the coronavirus.
COVID-19 hospitalizations also hit a record Wednesday in Iowa, while the state also posted its biggest one-day increase in cases since Aug. 28.
Trump, who made an effort in the last weeks before the November 3 presidential election after being hospitalized with COVID-19, held a large rally in Iowa on Wednesday with most of the attendees not wearing masks. It has continued to downplay the threat to public health posed by the virus that has killed more than 216,000 Americans.
“CLUSTERS” THE NEW NORMAL
New York, once the American epicenter of the global health crisis, is now facing spikes of infection in various “clusters.” Governor Andrew Cuomo said he expected the outbreaks to continue for at least a year.
“The way the world will move forward is for the virus to constantly outbreak in certain places,” Cuomo told reporters this week.
His efforts to stop local outbreaks of the coronavirus have put him in a two-pronged religious battle with Catholics and Jews, who are asking the courts to lift restrictions they claim limit religious freedom.
Cuomo, a Catholic, said the measures, which restricted gatherings in religious institutions to just 10 people in certain target areas, were not intended to single out religious groups and were consistent with other measures he has taken to combat the ” clusters “where infections spread rapidly.
But he also blamed Orthodox Jewish communities for causing some of the spikes of infection in their areas. An intensive care nurse at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City told Reuters on Thursday that there are at least a dozen patients with the virus in critical care there, most of whom are Orthodox Jews.
There are about 50 patients with the virus in her hospital and that number “is increasing every day,” she said, asking not to be identified because she was not authorized to speak to the media.
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