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(Reuters) – U.S. cases of the new coronavirus topped 6 million on Sunday as many Midwestern states reported a surge in infections, according to a Reuters tally.
Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota have recently reported record one-day increases in new cases, while Montana and Idaho have record numbers of COVID-19 patients currently hospitalized.
Nationwide, metrics on new cases, deaths, hospitalizations, and test positivity rates are declining, but there are emerging hot spots in the Midwest.
Many of the new cases in Iowa are in the counties that are home to the University of Iowa and Iowa State University, which are holding some classes in person. Colleges and universities across the country have seen outbreaks after students returned to campus, forcing some to switch to online-only learning.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Sunday that his state would send a “SWAT team” to the State University of New York (SUNY) campus in Oneonta, upstate New York, to contain an outbreak of COVID. -19. Fall classes, which began last week at the university, were suspended for two weeks after more than 100 people tested positive for the virus, about 3% of the total population of students and teachers, the SUNY chancellor said, Jim Malatras.
“We have had reports of several large groups of our students in Oneonta last week and unfortunately, due to those larger gatherings, there were a number of students exhibiting COVID symptoms,” Malatras said.
Across the Midwest, infections have also spiked after an annual motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota drew more than 365,000 people from across the country from Aug. 7-16. The South Dakota health department said 88 cases have been traced to the rally.
More than eight months after the pandemic, the United States continues to struggle with the evidence. The number of people screened has decreased in recent weeks.
Many health officials and at least 33 states have rejected the new COVID-19 testing guide issued by the Trump administration last week that said people exposed to the virus and without symptoms may not need testing.
Public health officials believe that the United States should test more frequently to find asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19 to slow the spread of the disease.
While the United States has the highest number of recorded infections in the world, it ranks 10th based on cases per capita, and Brazil, Peru and Chile have higher rates of infection, according to a Reuters tally.
The United States also has the highest number of deaths in the world at nearly 183,000 and ranks 11th in deaths per capita, surpassed by Sweden, Brazil, Italy, Chile, Spain, the United Kingdom, Belgium and Peru.
(Reporting by Lisa Shumaker in Chicago and Maria Caspani in New York; Edited by Daniel Wallis and Paul Simao)
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