As the United States struggles to contain the spread of the coronavirus, the focus has shifted to California, Arizona, Texas, and Florida, which have experienced dramatic spikes in recent days. But a map of an internal document produced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention obtained by Yahoo News shows that up to 32 states are not seeing declines in COVID-19 cases.
The map is a clear visual reminder that many of the states have ignored the CDC guide, which recommended not to reopen until they have accomplished 14 days of declining cases.
Another map, produced by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security and obtained by Yahoo News, shows that positive results of laboratory tests for coronavirus rose to nearly 8 percent nationwide this week. pass. Two weeks ago, Vice President Mike Pence, in an opinion piece seeking to minimize what he called “panic” about the coronavirus, boasted that the country’s positivity rate had dropped to 6 percent.
According to CDC data, the United States has seen 40,000 new positive cases of COVID-19 in each of the past four days. Just another day before, on April 6, he saw so many.
“I think the numbers speak for themselves,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, said Tuesday in an appearance before a Senate panel on the administration’s response to the pandemic.
“Clearly we are not in full control at the moment,” Fauci said, noting the dramatic increase in cases, particularly in the South.
“If you look at what’s happening, and you only see a few of the movie clips of people congregating, often without masks, and who are in crowds, jumping and avoiding and not paying attention to the guidelines we carefully publish, let’s continue having a lot of problems, “he said.
“It won’t surprise me if this goes up to 100,000 cases a day if it doesn’t change,” he added when pressured to make a prediction.
Fauci would not speculate on the death toll in the United States, which has risen to more than 126,000, according to Johns Hopkins University monitoring. But he added: “I think it is important to tell you and the American public that I am very concerned, because it could get very bad.”
The virus has increased in the southern and western states, with a total of cases that doubled in June in at least 10 states. The governors of Oregon and Kansas have issued mask mandates across the state, while Texas and Arizona have begun to reverse their reopens as cases increase. County officials in South Florida have announced that they will close the beaches over the July 4 weekend in a bid to stem the increase in cases there.
On Monday, Dr. Anne Schuchat, CDC’s senior deputy director, said the virus was spreading too quickly and widely for the United States to control.
“We are not in the situation in New Zealand, Singapore or Korea, where a new case is quickly identified and all contacts are located and people who are sick and isolated are exposed and quarantined and able to keep things under control, “he said in an interview with Dr. Howard Bauchner of the Journal of the American Medical Association.” We have too much virus across the country for that right now, so it’s very daunting. “
Jana Winter contributed reporting to this story.
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